LAFAYETTE SQUARE HISTORY
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The land we know of today as Lafayette Square was at the founding of Washington privately owned and occupied, being used alternatively as a family graveyard, an apple orchard, racetrack and a market. During the building of the President's Mansion, the government purchased the property as part of the mansion’s grounds - workers, including numerous enslaved African Americans, camped here during its construction. On November 1, 1800, when John Adams moved into the White House, he became the first of forty-two American presidents to look out onto what would be known as President’s Park for the
first quarter of the 19th century. Pennsylvania Avenue was cut through during Jefferson's presidency, separating the Park from the White House, as well as opening the adjacent blocks to private ownership. When the nationally-celebrated Major General Marquis de Lafayette visited Washington in 1824,
the President's Park became known as Lafayette Square.

It was not until 1815 that the White House was joined by other buildings on the Square. St. John’s Church was constructed on the northeast side in 1815. Its architect, Benjamin Henry Latrobe, was later commissioned by Commodore Stephen Decatur to build a three-story Federal style house on the northwest corner of the Square. It was during these early years that the Square became one of the city’s most fashionable and prominent neighborhoods, its location near the White House attracting numerous wealthy residents, including members of the Cabinet, Congress, and the diplomatic corps. In 1851 President Millard Fillmore commissioned landscape designer Andrew Jackson Downing to develop new plans for the city’s park spaces, including Lafayette Square. In 1853, the first statue was added to the square, a bronze likeness of Andrew Jackson on horseback. The piece, by sculptor Clark Mill, was the first equestrian statue cast in the United States.

Washington continued its dramatic growth after the Civil War, resulting in the further development of Lafayette Square. During the 60 years following the
war, the White House neighborhood saw its peak as the home to Washington’s elite, including banker William Wilson Corcoran, diplomat John Hay, and historian and author Henry Adams. Adams was the great chronicler of these cultural elite who famously expressed the enormous significance of the Square, writing that, “Beyond the Square, the country began.”

In addition to serving as a residential district, the Square also played an important role in executive government. Several American presidents lived in
its houses during various White House renovations, including James K. Polk, Theodore Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman. Many government offices have also been headquartered on Lafayette Square, including the Departments of State, War, and the Navy, which occupied what is today known as the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. The Department of the Treasury, whose construction on the Square began in 1834 is the oldest departmental building in Washington.

Private and cultural organizations also made a presence here, including the Freedmen’s Savings Bank, erected in 1869. The bank was established at the close of the Civil War to protect the finances of African-American soldiers and newly freed slaves and held 57 million dollars in funds by 1874. Internal corruption and the Depression of 1873 brought about the bank’s failure, shortly after the appointment of Frederick Douglass as its president. The Cosmos Club purchased the Cutts-Madison House in 1887 to use as the meeting place for its membership of scientists and artists. Also by the end of the 1880s the Lafayette Square Opera House was constructed on the former site of the Rodgers House. Over the next fifty years, performers including Sarah
Bernhardt, Al Jolsen, Will Rogers, and Helen Hays would grace its stage. In 1937, the Opera House became the Belasco Theater, one of the only venues
in Washington to present African American acts to desegregated audiences.

The grand neighborhood described by Adams would not last forever, and Lafayette Square began to decline as a residential area in the early twentieth century. By the 1920s, the many fine residences, including the Corcoran, Hay and Adams homes gave, were razed to make way to large commercial buildings. By 1956, Decatur House owner Marie Beale was the last private resident on the Square. With its grandeur all but disappeared, the government proposed to construct two new office buildings on either side of the Square, demolishing the remaining residential buildings in the process. This plan was however derailed in 1961, when the Kennedy administration intervened in
order to preserve the architectural character of the neighborhood. This preservation effort, spearheaded by Jacqueline Kennedy, was one of the first to protect an entire neighborhood rather than a specific building, and has had a lasting impact on the historic preservation movement. Thus, despite the loss of so many of its original buildings, a stroll around Lafayette Square today nevertheless calls to mind its compelling past.