page_title: Benjamin Ogle Tayloe
section_title: Residence in Washington, D.C.
hierarchical_section_title: Benjamin Ogle Tayloe / Later career / Residence in Washington, D.C.
caption_attribution_description: English: The Benjamin Ogle Tayloe House (also known as the Cameron House, Cream White House, and Little White House) located at 21 Madison Place NW in Washington, D.C., in the United States. Photograph depicts the house in 1886, the year before Senator J. Donald Cameron purchased the property and made extension interior renovations.
context_page_description: Benjamin "Ogle" Tayloe was an American businessman, bon vivant, diplomat, and influential political activist in Washington, D.C. during the first half of the 19th century. Although he never held elective office, he was a prominent Whig and influential in presidential electoral politics in the 1840s and 1850s. His home, the Tayloe House, became a salon for politically powerful people in the federal government and socially influential individuals in the United States and abroad. Tayloe was also a party in the important 1869 contract law case, Willard v. Tayloe, 75 U.S. 557.
context_section_description: In 1828, Tayloe built his wife a house in Washington, D.C., directly across the street from the White House. The Tayloes did not immediately occupy their home, however. Tayloe had a strong political disagreement with the newly elected President, Andrew Jackson, and refused to move into the home.  Instead, Tayloe leased the building to Thomas Swann, Sr., a lawyer (and the father of Thomas Swann, Jr., who became Governor of Maryland in 1866).  Swann vacated the home in November 1829, at which time Tayloe and his wife made the house their permanent residence.
  Over the four decades following its construction, the Tayloe House was an important social gathering place for prominent Washingtonians.  In 1829, when Henry Clay left the office of Secretary of State, much of the furniture in his home was acquired by the Tayloes and used to decorate their home. Tayloe House was the last house in Washington which President William Henry Harrison visited before he died in 1841.  
  In 1859 Tayloe House was the scene of a murder. Philip Barton Key II was the son of Francis Scott Key and the nephew of Chief Justice Roger B. Taney. In the spring of 1858, Key began having an affair with Teresa Bagioli Sickles, the wife of his friend Daniel Sickles. On February 26, 1859, Sickles learned of the affair. The following day, he saw Key in Lafayette Square signalling to his wife. Sickles rushed out into the park, drew a single pistol, and shot the unarmed Key three times while the other man pleaded for his life. Key was taken into the nearby Tayloe House and died moments later. Key's spirit, eyewitnesses and authors claim, now haunts Lafayette Square and can be seen on dark nights near the spot where he was shot.
  As Tayloe was one of the most influential and active members of the Whig Party in the District of Columbia, the Tayloe house became a noted meeting place for many of the leading political figures of early 19th century American politics.  Among the many frequent visitors to the house were Chief Justice John Marshall, Senator and Secretary of State Henry Clay, Senator and Secretary of State Daniel Webster, Vice President and Secretary of State John C. Calhoun, Senator Henry Clay, Senator and Secretary of State Lewis Cass, Secretary of State Edward Livingston, Speaker of the House and Senator Robert Charles Winthrop, General Winfield Scott, Senator and Secretary of State Edward Everett, Senator and Secretary of State William H. Seward, Associate Justice Joseph Story, and many others. Presidents John Quincy Adams, Martin Van Buren, William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, and Millard Fillmore also were frequent guests. Anthony Trollope spent much of his free time being entertained by the Tayloes at their home during his visit to Washington in the winter of 1862.
caption: The Benjamin Ogle Tayloe House in 1886.
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