page_title: Cutts–Madison House
section_title: Federal ownership
hierarchical_section_title: Cutts–Madison House / Federal ownership
caption_attribution_description: English: Looking across H Street NW at the northwest corner of the Cutts-Madison House (also known as the Dolley Madison House) at 721 Madison Place NW in Washington, D.C. in October 2009. The Howard T. Markey National Courts Building housing the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit is the tall, red brick building with modernist windows in back of the house.
context_page_description: The Cutts–Madison House is an American colonial-style historic home located at 1520 H Street NW in Washington, D.C.The house is best known for being the residence of former First Lady Dolley Madison, who lived there from November 1837 until her death in July 1849.
  The Cutts–Madison House is part of the Lafayette Square Historic District, a National Historic Landmark District. Now owned by the federal government, it used as part of a federal courts complex.
context_section_description: In 1900, the United States Congress passed a resolution establishing the U.S. Senate Park Commission (also known as the "McMillan Commission" because it was chaired by Senator James McMillan [R-Mich.]). The Park Commission's charge was to reconcile competing visions for the development of Washington, D.C., and in particular the National Mall and adjacent areas. The Park Commission's proposals, which came to be known as the "McMillan Plan," proposed that all the buildings around Lafayette Square be razed and replaced by tall, Neoclassical buildings clad in white marble for use by executive branch agencies. For a time, it appeared that the Cutts–Madison House would not survive. William Wilson Corcoran's Corcoran House at 1615 H Street NW was torn down in 1922 and replaced with the Neoclassical United States Chamber of Commerce headquarters. The Hay-Adams Houses were razed in 1927 by real estate developer Harry Wardman, and the Hay–Adams Hotel built on the site. At nearby 1616 H Street NW, the Brookings Institution purchased the rear garden from the private owners of the Decatur House and built an eight-story Modernist office building there. Several million dollars were spent in the late 1950s on designs to raze all the buildings on the east side of Lafayette Square and replace them with a white, modernist office building which would house judicial offices.
  Opposition to the demolition of the Cutts–Madison House and other buildings on Lafayette Square began forming shortly after the plan to raze the structures was announced. Senators James E. Murray and Wayne Morse, several members of the House of Representatives, and citizens of the District of Columbia lobbied to defeat the legislation authorizing the demolition of the buildings. The American Institute of Architects (AIA) devoted the February 1961 issue of its journal to a "Lament for Lafayette Square." The AIA established a committee to develop plans to save the buildings and adapt the new structures so that they incorporated the style and feel of the older homes.
  The newly elected Kennedy administration indicated on February 16, 1961, that it was anxious to retain the existing historic homes on Lafayette Square. In November, the Committee of 100 on the Federal City (an influential group of city leaders) asked President Kennedy to save and restore all the remaining buildings on Lafayette Square. In February 1962, First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy lobbied General Services Administration (GSA) director Bernard L. Boutin to stop the demolition and adopt a different design plan. "The wreckers haven't started yet, and until they do it can be saved," she wrote. Mrs. Kennedy enlisted architect John Carl Warnecke, a friend of her husband's who happened to be in town that weekend, to create a design which would incorporate the new buildings with the old. Warnecke conceived the basic design over that weekend, and worked closely with Mrs. Kennedy over the next few months to formalize the design proposal. The design was presented to the public and the Commission of Fine Arts (which had approval over any plan) in October 1962, and with Mrs. Kennedy's backing the Commission adopted the revised Warnecke design proposal.
  Warnecke's design was based on the architectural theory of contextualism, where modern buildings are harmonized with the urban forms usual to a traditional city. Not only did Warnecke's design build the first modern buildings on Lafayette Square, but they were the first buildings in the city to utilize contextualism as a design philosophy. Warnecke's design for the National Courts Building was to create tall, flat structures in red brick which would serve as relatively unobtrusive backgrounds to the lighter-colored residential homes like the Cutts–Madison House. The Cutts–Madison House, Cosmos Club building, and Benjamin Ogle Tayloe House were joined, and a courtyard built between them and the National Courts building.
  The Cutts–Madison House has remained part of the National Courts building complex ever since.
caption: The Cutts–Madison House (corner), with the Cosmos Club headquarters (in tan) to the right and the National Courts building in the rear.
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