page_title: Waddy Butler Wood
section_title: Wood, Donn & Deming
hierarchical_section_title: Waddy Butler Wood / Wood, Donn & Deming
caption_attribution_description: English: National Museum of Women in the Arts located at 1250 New York Avenue, NW in Washington The building was first used as a Masonic temple, and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
context_page_description: Waddy Butler Wood was a prominent American architect of the early 20th century and resident of Washington, D.C. Although Wood designed and remodeled numerous private residences, his reputation rested primarily on his larger commissions, such as banks, commercial offices, and government buildings. His most famous works include the Woodrow Wilson House and the Main Interior Building.
context_section_description: In 1902 he began an association with Edward Donn, Jr. and William I. Deming, forming the firm of Wood, Donn and Deming. The firm was highly successful in Washington, D.C. providing services to various branches of government. Their designs can be found throughout the United States, including the expansion of the Portsmouth Naval Hospital in Portsmouth, Virginia. They also had a strong residential client base designing houses for prominent citizens such as Mrs. Phil Sheridan, General Charles Lane Fitzhugh and Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet; as well as public residences such as the Bachelor Apartment House located near the White House.
  In 1906 Wood, Donn & Deming became the first Washington, D.C. architectural firm to design a bank high-rise in their city when they designed the Union Trust Building, now home to the New America Foundation and Joe's, the DC location of a high end steak and seafood chain.  The building is also listed on the National Register of Historic Places. In the past, the city's largest banks had each retained nationally renowned architects while local architects were only chosen to design bank branches or remodel existing buildings. By choosing Wood's firm, Union Trust began a trend of the city's banks choosing local architects to design their buildings.
  Wood's partnership with Donn and Deming is best known for the firm's work in 1907 on the Masonic temple located at the intersection of 13th Street, H Street, and New York Avenue NW, which is now the National Museum of Women in the Arts. The 69,000-square-foot (6,400 m²) building, a specimen of neo-Renaissance and Renaissance Revival styles, was declared a Washington, D.C. Historic Landmark in 1984 and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1987.
  In addition to the Masonic lodge hall, the building originally housed professional offices, the George Washington University law library, and a movie theater. The exterior has never been altered substantially. As the Temple Association envisioned, the building's location at the tip of a wedge-shaped block provides an aesthetic buffer zone which "permits of no future building being erected sufficiently near to mar [the Temple's] monumental effect ... ."
  Despite the successes of Wood, Donn and Deming, his use of occult masonic symbolism and features was not universally appreciated and the firm was dissolved in 1912.
caption: National Museum of Women in the Arts, originally a Masonic temple, in Washington, D.C.
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