Toutorsky Mansion

The Toutorsky Mansion is a five-story, 18-room house located at 1720 16th Street, NW, in Washington, D.C.

The 12,000-square-foot mansion was completed in 1894 for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Henry Billings Brown, who paid $25,000 in 1891 to buy the land from the Riggs family cite news | last = Hales | first = Linda | coauthors = | title = The Many-Storied Toutorsky Mansion;Historic 16th-Street Music School Opens for a 'Bare Bones' Preview| work = | pages = T9| language = | publisher = Washington Post| date = 1992-08-13| url = | accessdate = ] and spent $40,000 on its construction.cite web| url=http://www.toutorsky.com/ | title=Toutorsky Mansion: History | accessdate=2008-09-27 ]

The house was designed by architect William Henry Miller, the first graduate of Cornell University's School of Architecture, who modeled the exterior on 16th-century Flemish buildings, and the interior using a mixture of Gothic, Elizabethan, Jacobean, and Colonial elements. The house contains eight fireplaces and a main staircase featuring hand-carved griffins. cite news | last = Woodlee| first =Yolanda | coauthors = | title = Bed-and-Breakfast Plan Irks Dupont Neighbors; Opponents Cite Potential Traffic, Noise| work = | pages = T03| language = | publisher = Washington Post| date = 2002-06-27| url = | accessdate = ] "With its stepped and scroll-edged gables, insistent rows of windows, dark red brick, and strong horizontal stone courses, it is a rare iteration of Renaissance Flemish architecture in a city whose architectural ancestry is overwhelmingly English and French," according to the AIA Guide to the Architecture of Washington, D.C.cite book| author=Moeller, Gerard Martin | title=AIA Guide to the Architecture of Washington, D.C., 4th edition| location=Baltimore, Maryland| publisher=Johns Hopkins University Press| year=2006|pages=261 | url= http://books.google.com/books/jhu?id=HwxObsj2GOQC&pg=PA261&dq=toutorsky&ei=HRHtSMC3L4TkygS44szNBg&sig=ACfU3U1X993swKk4cpghoVxHv5sUMb7HMw| isbn=0801884683]

The house is part of the 16th Street Historic District and cannot be demolished or significantly altered without permission from the city's Historic Preservation Review Board. cite news | last = Shaw| first = Terri| coauthors = | title = Peabody Receives Concert Pianist Toutorsky's Historic Home| work = | pages = D1| language = | publisher = Washington Post| date = 1989-08-25| url = | accessdate = ]

History

The mansion "provided shelter for some of the most profound deliberations and negotiations in the nation's history"; while living at the house, Justice Brown wrote the segregation-justifying Plessy v. Ferguson decision and voted to uphold the Chinese Exclusion Act, the nation's first law banning a class of immigrants by race or nationality.cite news
first=Melissa
last=Castro
url=http://washington.bizjournals.com/washington/stories/2008/04/28/story3.html
title= Toutorsky Mansion in Dupont Circle headed for auction
work=Washington Business Journal
date= April 25, 2008 ] Brown lived in the house until he died in 1913.

The house had several owners over the next several decades. From 1924 to 1927, the mansion was rented to the Persian Legation to the United States. cite news | last = Conroy| first =Asrah Booth | coauthors = | title =The Manse With a Chance of a Ghost | work = | pages = F1| language = | publisher = Washington Post | date = 1992-10-04| url = | accessdate = ]

In 1942, the house was purchased by the Zionist Organization of America, which pushed the U.S. government, Congress, and the American public to create Israel in 1948. The group, which used the building as its headquarters through 1947, moved some interior walls to create better office spaces.

Toutorsky purchase

The house was purchased in 1947 by Basil Peter Toutorsky. Born in 1896 in Novocherkassk, Russia, Toutorsky was a hereditary nobleman who had studied law at the nobles-only Imperial University of Moscow and music at the Moscow Conservatory of Music. He served in the Imperial Russian Navy during World War I, surviving the explosion of the Russian battleship Empress Maria in the Black Sea in 1916; then fought for the White Russians who tried to overthrow the October Revolution. In 1920, he fled from the Crimea to Turkey and arrived in the United States in 1923. cite news | last = | first = | coauthors = | title = David van Tijn, Vice President Of TvT Consulting Firm, Dies| work = | pages = | language = | publisher = Washington Post | date = 1989-08-17| url = | accessdate = ] With his wife of 11 years, the Mexican opera singer Maria Ignacia Howard Toutorsky, he opened the Toutorsky Academy of Music and ran it for nearly four decades.

Among the furnishings were collections of dolls; swans; World War I medals, decorations and uniforms; stuffed wild animals; Persian carpets and tapestries; heavy antique furniture; and 21 pianos, including a Bechstein concert grand on which Franz Liszt had played.

In November 1988, the Toutorskys bequeathed the house to Johns Hopkins University's Peabody Conservatory of Music in exchange for an annuity and lifetime use of the mansion's carriage house.

Post-Toutorskys

After Maria's death in 1988 and Basil's in 1989, the university rented some rooms to students for $1 a month to keep the house occupied. University officials sought $1.5 million for the house, but ultimately sold it December 1990 for $808,000 cite news | last = Thomason| first = Robert | coauthors = | title = Toutorsky Mansion To Be Restored| work = | pages =T5 | language = | publisher = Washington Post | date = 1991-01-17| url = | accessdate = ] and used the proceeds to endow a piano studio and a scholarship fund named for Toutorsky.

The buyer was Bruce Johnson, who owned a Dupont Circle firm that performed historic renovations. He pronounced it fundamentally sound, and planned some painting, patching and plastering. Ultimately, he added air-conditioning and bathrooms. The building received much restoration and cosmetic work in preparation for a 1992 fundraising event called "National Symphony Orchestra Decorators' Show House." cite news | last = Hales | first = Linda | coauthors = | title = Show House;Images Of Sheer Artistry;To Benefit the National Symphony, Interior Designers Bring Out the History In a Century-Old Mansion| work = | pages = | language = | publisher = Washington Post| date =1992-10-01 | url = | accessdate = ]

In 2001, realtor Humberto Gonzalez bought the property for $2.2 million. He sought to run it as a 16-room bed-and-breakfast inn and event venue, but nearby residents objected, and the city ultimately granted him a license to offer just six rooms for rent. In 2008, Gonzalez began seeking to sell the mansion.

References

External links

* [http://www.toutorsky.com/ Toutorsky Mansion]
* [http://www.flickr.com/photos/mr_t_in_dc/512851762/in/set-72157600013590287/ Flickr photo of mansion]
* [http://66.179.210.42/photo-washington-dc-inn-toutorsky_mansion.html Interior photos of mansion]