National Affairs: New World Salon

It was a house where “Roosevelt at 43 could not be taken seriously.” It was a salon such as Dr. Johnson and his Literary Club would have never thought possible on the barbarous shores of the New World.

In 1884 H. H. Richardson, probably the first great genius among American architects, built twin houses on La Fayette Square in Washington, D. C. One was the home of Henry Adams, historian, man of letters; in the other lived John Hay, statesman. Mr. Hay became Ambassador to the Court of St. James’s, then Secretary of State under Presidents McKinley and Roosevelt. Imperceptibly, inevitably, the salon appeared. Henry Adams and John LaFarge would come in, chattering feverishly about the sculpture of Augustus St. Gaudens; Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge would play “a game in which they were always liable to find the shifty sands of American opinion yield suddenly under their feet.” Political powers angled with suave Continental diplomats, with Bostonian literateurs.

On a tranquil afternoon, John Hay would look out of his windows on La Fayette Square, watch an “old corps commander or admiral of the Civil War, tottering along to the club for his cards or cocktail.” Over there was where Mrs. Dolly Madison used to live after her husband died, there was the house of Daniel Webster, of William H. Seward, of Commodore Stephen Decatur. In 1905 John Hay died; so did the one great salon of the New World.

Progress came along. Last week it was announced that the twin residences* of John Hay and Henry Adams would be torn down to make way for a $2,500,000 apartment hotel to be known as the Carlton Chambers.

* Until recently, the Hay residence was occupied by his son-in-law and daughter, Senator and Mrs. James W. Wadsworth. The Adams house is now the Brazilian Embassy.