AN URBAN PARADISE AND A UNIQUE HISTORICAL GARDEN
AN URBAN PARADISE AND A UNIQUE HISTORICAL GARDEN
Mary Scott Townsend’s garden on the west side of her magnificent Beaux-Arts mansion, photographed at the time of her daughter’s grand wedding in May 1910, captures her love of classical simplicity and uncluttered space for entertaining. Beaux-Arts residences of the Gilded Age, although heavily French-inspired, were frequently surrounded by “classical” or Italianate gardens, thus the Italian references of the Townsends’ mostly 19th-century garden ornaments. Frederick Law Olmsted Jr., an early influence on Mrs. Townsend’s garden design, suggested that her prize copy of the Tacca Fountain in Florence be moved from near the house to draw the eye to the end of her spacious lawn. Following the Cosmos Club’s acquisition of the property in 1950, architect Horace Peaslee cut the West Garden in half to accommodate a members’ parking lot and rearranged a number of the architectural elements and garden ornaments throughout the redesigned gardens and in the house. These two significant periods in the evolution of the gardens lead up to the present.
The Garden Committee invites Club members and their guests to step out into the gardens and take note of their beauty and rich 125-year history. Members can look forward to the enhancement of the gardens in celebration of the Club’s Sesquicentennial in 2028.
The Cosmos Club Gardens is an introduction to the past, the present, and the future.
“ The Cosmos Club is unique among Washington’s city clubs for its expansive gardens... ”
The Cosmos Club is unique among Washington’s city clubs for its expansive gardens and attached surface-level parking. Members and their guests are fortunate to have the gardens on the east, west and front sides of the magnificent Townsend mansion that has been our home for more than seventy years. Our history of the gardens begins with Mrs. Mary Scott Townsend’s letter to Frederick Law Olmsted in 1900 requesting a garden design for the west side of her newly completed Beaux-Arts home. In 1952, her gardens were dramatically redesigned following the Club’s purchase of the Townsend mansion. This booklet traces the history and aesthetics of the gardens while also announcing new visions for their purpose and beautification.
“ When it came to her garden, none but the famous landscape designer Frederick Law Olmsted would do. ”
The Townsend Gardens
Mrs. Townsend, one of the wealthiest women in America at that time and socially ambitious, sought to recreate the grandeur of Europe in Washington with the latest word in Gilded Age architecture. She chose the fashionable New York architectural firm of Carrère and Hastings to convert the plain brick Hillyer house she had purchased in 1898 at 2121 Massachusetts Avenue into Beaux-Arts glory. When it came to her garden, none but the famous landscape designer Frederick Law Olmsted would do. She attached a plan of the garden spaces around the house to her letter requesting his expertise.
Unfortunately, Olmsted’s health had declined rapidly since designing the extensive park and formal gardens surrounding Biltmore, George Vanderbilt’s vast
The Tacca Fountain, described as “fountain (imported) to be used as feature on west lawn.” Photograph by Percy Gallagher, October 6, 1902. Olmsted Archives, Gallagher Photos Job #296-2.
châteauesque-style mansion near Asheville, North Carolina. The Olmsted firm replied that Olmsted Sr. was no longer active in the firm, but his namesake son could visit her for a consultation when his schedule allowed. Two years later, in June 1902, young Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. visited the Townsend property with colleagues, including Percy Gallagher, who took photographs of the existing garden and the Italian artifacts that Mrs. Townsend, or her interior designer, Jules Allard, had chosen as decorative accents in the garden. Chief of these is a replica of the Tacca Fountain in the Piazza SS. Annunziata in Florence (one of four known replicas). One of Gallagher’s photos, taken in October 1902, showed that she had turned it into a flower planter near the house. Olmsted Jr. returned with plans and drawings in November 1902. The timing was
disastrous. Mrs. Townsend’s husband had fallen from his horse and died several days after Olmsted’s visit. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that she was in no mood for garden plans. According to Olmsted Jr.’s notes, she did not like the formality of his designs, the reduction in the size of the lawn, the proposed bay trees, or the brick screen beyond the relocated Tacca Fountain. She only wanted a better border planting and a good backing for the wall of the carriage drive as seen from the outside. Shortly thereafter, she left for a year in Europe with her young daughter, Mathilde, turning her back on further discussions with the Olmsted firm. Even so, there is evidence that some of the Olmsted firm’s ideas endured; for example, their drawings show the Tacca Fountain relocated from beside the house to the Florida Avenue side of the garden.
“ Even so, there is evidence that some of the Olmsted firm’s ideas endured... ”
Mrs. R. H. Townsend Washington D.C. Preliminary Plan of Lawn Garden. Olmsted Brothers, Landscape Architects, October 1902. Olmsted Archives #296-14.
In addition, a Gallagher photograph and Olmsted drawing show “a covered seat against stable wall.” This became the sheltering structure for a marble wall fountain, perhaps awaiting the arrival of the fountain itself, which was likely to have been assembled from Renaissance elements in Florence. This photograph also shows a carved marble bench.
On her return from Europe, Mrs. Townsend focused on lavishly entertaining Washington’s social elite, with the support of her thirty servants. Between 1904 and Mathilde’s grand wedding to Peter Goelet Gerry, a descendant of Elbridge Gerry, the fifth vice president of the United States, in May 1910, the West Garden was designed in the Italianate style popular at the time as a complement to Beaux-Arts buildings. It featured the wide lawn she favored for entertaining, massed shrubbery inside the ornamental iron fence, which was installed by the previous owner of the property,
and the mostly 19th-century Italianate decorative features, to which she may have made additions during her European travels. These included Romanesque-style columns and an Italian wall fountain in front of the stables, a bench with griffins, wellheads, vases, ornamental benches, and the lounging lions on the balcony. The columns and wall fountain were photographed by the eminent architectural photographer Frances Benjamin Johnston between 1908 and 1909. G. V. Buck photographed the “Italian garden” from the point of view of wedding guests—they included President Taft and Vice President and Mrs. Sherman, among many other luminaries—who could view the garden or descend steps from the second-floor ballroom, where the brief ceremony was held, followed by a seated breakfast in the dining room.
Mathilde Townsend’s scandalous divorce and subsequent remarriage in 1925 caused
“ ...the West Garden was designed in the Italianate style popular at the time. ”
Italian carved marble bench in front of a covered seat against the stable wall. The brick space was waiting for the arrival of an Italian wall fountain, then under construction.
Photograph by Percy Gallagher, June 11, 1902. Olmsted Archives, Gallagher Photos-3.
great distress to her mother. Her health failing, she spent much of the few years remaining to her in European spas. She died in 1931. Mathilde and her new husband Sumner Welles, who became Under Secretary of State during the FDR administration, spent relatively little time in the Massachusetts Avenue house. They preferred their house in Prince George’s County as well as foreign travel. Mathilde Welles died in Switzerland in 1949. By the time the Cosmos Club purchased the property from Sumner Welles in 1950, the gardens and the house, which had been rented during WWII to house 150 women of the Canadian Women’s Army Corps, had become sadly neglected.
The Peaslee Gardens
Following the purchase, the architect members of the Club called on their colleagues to
submit preliminary schemes for converting the Townsend mansion into viable quarters for the Club and subdividing the grounds “for dining, garden, and parking.” The Club selected the plans of Horace W. Peaslee, who was best known for designing DC’s Meridian Hill Park. According to Wilcomb Washburn, the Club’s historian, the most controversial aspect of Peaslee’s plan was the question of parking. Peaslee was irritated when members of the architectural group signed a petition against the use of the grounds bordering on Florida Avenue for parking, but he insisted that a balance must be found between those who wished to retain the ornamental garden and those who wished to turn the larger part of the grounds into a parking lot “to facilitate noontime diners.” His compromise can be seen in his 1952 plan showing parking lots on both the east and west sides of the building. The West side lot, with its grand
“ The Club selected the plans of Horace W. Peaslee, who was best known for designing DC’s Meridian Hill Park. ”
Entrance driveway and front entrance under the marquise of 2121 Massachusetts Avenue, NW, the newly purchased home of the Cosmos Club, showing obvious signs of prolonged neglect. Historic American Buildings Survey Photograph, June 7, 1952. HABS DC, WASH, 215-15. Prints and Photographs Online, Library of Congress.
entrance and exit gates, remains largely as Peaslee designed it, as do the new garden spaces intended for the members’ enjoyment.
Relocation of the Italianate artifacts
Peaslee rearranged many of the artifacts that were originally scattered throughout the grounds in the Townsend era, after having those that were damaged repaired. He moved the largest part of the Tacca Fountain to the East Garden where it has been extensively restored twice, in 1992 and 2020. By 1950, the Townsend cast-stone cement columns, once intended for support of a garden pergola, were in a circle in the area designated for the Club’s primary dining room. Peaslee incorporated four of these in his dining room design, today’s Garden Dining Room, and the other four were
Horace Peaslee plan of the new parking lot and redesigned West Garden, 1952. It remains largely as Peaslee designed it, although most of the trees and shrubs on his bountiful list have been replaced over the years since. Cosmos Club Archives, Horace W. Peaslee Renovation (1952), Oversize Box 1.
stored and relocated to the East Garden around 2005, where they form a small pergola today. He moved the Italian wall fountain from the south wall of the stables (today’s Powell Room) to the Fountain Suite adjacent to the Garden Dining Room. That area became the kitchen and, in 1988, the fountain was moved to the Heroy Room, now the 1878 Grille. The bench that sat in front of the wall fountain was moved to the west side wall of the Dolley Madison Parlor next to today’s Gold Room, and later to the East Garden. A statue of Daphne formerly graced the pond designed for the West Garden but unfortunately was stolen.
Some of the Italianate architectural features were moved from indoors to what Peaslee called “Rendezvous Allée” paralleling Massachusetts Avenue. The round wellhead is of Venetian Istrian stone, 14th to 16th century. It was well protected in the
“ Peaslee rearranged many of the artifacts that were originally scattered throughout the grounds in the Townsend era. ”
Horace Peaslee’s Rendezvous Allée with square and round wellheads, flowerpots, and griffins, and perhaps the bust of Daphne, later stolen. Photograph by H. M. Lester, 1952. Cosmos Club Archives, Photographs, Box 2.
house lobby during the Townsend era but has suffered greatly from outdoor exposure and will soon be restored. The 19th-century square white marble wellhead—wellheads were very popular as planters in the era—was probably inspired by North Italian wellheads of the Renaissance period. Also from the Townsend era are the griffins (formerly the ends of a bench), the white recumbent lions on the Warne ballroom terrace, and lesser urns, planters, and vases. The lions are copies of the sleeping lions on the Lion Terrace of the Vorontsov Palace at Alupka in the Crimean Peninsula.
Plantings, from wisteria to trees to roses
During the search for larger quarters, Club members had long insisted that a way
must be found for moving the ancient wisteria, a striking feature of the façade of the clubhouse on Lafayette Square, to a new clubhouse as a symbol of the Club’s purpose and continuity. As founder and chairman of the Club’s Garden Committee, Peaslee oversaw the grafting from the old vine and its training on iron grillwork from the balcony to the patio. Photographs taken during construction show that all the screening shrubbery along Massachusetts Avenue had been removed, probably for the repair and repainting of the imposing grille fence. Peaslee proposed that he work with Club member and landscape architect Leon Zach, who had been an Olmsted Associate, on the selection and placement of a new background screen. The minutes of the Building Committee for 1952 include numerous references to the acquisition of trees.
“ The Baroque
17th-century Tacca Fountain was a ‘ marvellous fusion of fantasy and naturalism. ”
During Peaslee’s tenure as chair of the Garden Committee, Mrs. Peaslee oversaw the planting of many roses, and the [Peaslee] committee accomplished the planting of masses of azaleas in the front gardens.
Principal changes to the gardens since the 1950s
A donation from Gallaudet College (now University) and its alumni association provided for the replanting of the “Oasis,” the kidney-shaped space in the Peaslee plan, in memory of Dr. Edward Milner Gallaudet, its founder and a Cosmos Club member and onetime president (1883). It was dedicated in April 1985. The Garden Committee commissioned a landscape architecture firm to draw up a planting plan with a background of columnar junipers. Garden Committee member Dr. Frederick C. Meyer,
a botanist at the U.S. National Arboretum, chose the ornamental plants.
Gardens are ephemeral. Many enhancements have been made to the gardens, often because of destruction from weather events, age deteriorated plants, location too close to the building foundation, improvements to existing landscape areas, sculptural features, and vistas, and providing for ADA access. These changes have taken place since 2000 under the leadership of Garden Committee chairs, principally among them Iris Miller, in consultation with Garden Committee members, various experts, and Cosmos Club garden and engineering staff. All three gardens saw improvements. A new planting plan for the front garden involved trimming back the long-familiar azaleas and adding leafy green shrubs and ornamental trees. The neglected East Garden required a great deal of landscape design and restoration, efforts that included creating
“ Gardens are ephemeral... Many enhancements have been made... ”
Photographed from behind the attractively planted square wellhead toward the round wellhead and the griffins, the Rendezvous Allée has been enhanced with flagstone borders and hornbeams separating it from the parking lot. Cosmos Club photograph.
safe flagstone areas and the oval lawn and moving the ornamental bench from the West Garden. To shield the Rendezvous Allée from the West Garden parking lot, a line of hornbeams was planted, while flagstones now border the walk.
A most important accomplishment of the Garden Committee, in cooperation with the Art Committee, was the restoration of the Tacca Fountain. As authority Steven F. Ostrow has indicated, the Baroque 17th-century Tacca Fountain in the Piazza SS. Annunziata in Florence was admired for its “marvellous fusion of fantasy and naturalism.” Ostrow notes that, in the early twentieth century, works like the Tacca Fountain replica were meant for the gardens of the most wealthy. The restoration required parts replicated in Italy and the fountain’s various elements reassembled in
Celebrating the Tacca
Fountain and a vision
for the gardens’ future
Two events in the Spring of 2022 celebrated the return of the Tacca Fountain replica to its full working glory. A formal celebration of the fountain’s most recent restoration took place on May 13 in the Warne Ballroom. On April 19, the Garden Committee hosted a gala event in the East Garden, when water flowed in the fountain to the accompaniment of a brass quintet. This joyous celebration marked a return to inperson events at the Club after the two years of Covid lockdown, a reminder to all who attended that the East and West gardens are there to be enjoyed by all members and their guests. A new vision is developing for the gardens as Mrs. Townsend envisioned them, designed to complement an outstanding Beaux-Arts building as beautiful outdoor spaces for entertainment and aesthetic pleasure.
Acknowledgments
Garden Committee Chair: Penny Morrill
Text: Copyright by Sara Day, 2023
Plants, garden artifacts, and floral photography: Copyright by Amy Lamb, 2023
Design: Brooke Morton
This was not the first time that the Cosmos Club Garden Committee has pursued the idea of a booklet about the Club’s unique gardens. The booklet has now come to fruition with the vision and leadership of committee chair Penny Morrill. Sara Day’s text and the related historical illustrations have relied on the work of several key researchers, including past and present members of the Cosmos Club’s Garden Committee, other Club members, and Building Manager Chris Line. Andrea Schoenfeld was the first to look at the Townsend Job #296 drawings and photographs at the Olmsted Archives in Brookline, Massachusetts (a CD of all the drawings was later donated to the Club archives). She has also made available her copies of relevant correspondence in the Olmsted Papers Collection at the Library of Congress. Marie Gallup’s chart of provenance and the past and present locations of the garden statuary has also been invaluable. Laurence J. Aurbach’s 2013 paper “Cosmos Club Legacies: The Land and Decorative Arts,” currently located on the Club’s website, was an important resource, as was Steven F. Ostrow’s paper “Pietro Tacca’s Fontane del Mostri Marini: Collecting copies
at the end of the Gilded Age,” Journal of History of Collections, June 2017. Chris Line provided plans and photographs from the period following the Club’s purchase of the Townsend House and has assisted with valuable fact-checking. Long-time Garden Committee member and past chairman Iris Miller explained the considerable improvements made by the Garden Committee during her tenure. Thad Garrett, librarian, and Lindsay Dupertuis, archivist, helped the team of Helen Schmitz and Sara Day locate relevant materials in the Club’s collections. Penny Morrill searched local newspapers for information about the gardens and the Townsend family. The Executive Board representatives to the Garden Committee, Elizabeth Beck (President) and Miriam Nisbet, have been strong supporters of the booklet and given great advice. Finally, this project would not have been possible without the support of Cosmos Club’s General Manager, Mitchell Platt, and the generous funding grant from the Cosmos Club Historic Preservation Foundation.
All contents of the Cosmos Club website are: Copyright 2023 by Cosmos Club and/or its suppliers. All rights reserved.
Inside back cover
