Silver Senator William Stewart's Castle (or "Stewart's Folly")

William Morris Stewart, often referred to as the “Silver Senator,” was born in 1827 in Wayne County, New York. When he was still a small child, the family moved to Trumbull County, Ohio. Stewart made his first fortune in silver mining in Nevada but abandoned mining in 1860 to become a mining attorney in Virginia City, participating in litigation for the Comstock Lode.  When Nevada became a state in 1864, Stewart assisted in developing its constitution and became the first U.S. senator from that state in 1864.

 

In spite of economic setbacks caused by the financial panic of 1873, development began slowly on and around Dupont Circle, led largely by the efforts of William Stewart, Curtis Hillyer, and Thomas Sunderland.  All three men were members of the "Pacific Syndicate," a somewhat secret real estate cartel that had inside information that Alexander Shepherd was planning to improve Connecticut Avenue from Farragut Square to Dupont Circle, so they secretly bought up as many lots around the Circle that they could.  Although William Stewart was financially strapped at the time and had to sell out of the real estate syndicate, Hillyer and Sunderland still pressured him to build in Dupont Circle to encourage property sales and development, and the larger the house, the better. 

 

Stewart's Castle.  Library of Congress.

Stewart yielded to the pressure from his fellow syndicate members and contracted Board of Public Works architect Adolf Cluss to design a huge, five-story, Second Empire–style mansion, with a Rhenish-style tower inspired by one of Annie Stewart's trips. Where a financially strapped silver miner and modestly paid senator found the money to build such a large and costly home is a mystery. One possibility was Stewart’s lucrative involvement in a mining scam.  In 1871, Stewart, along with a Wisconsin businessman along with the help of the minister to the United Kingdom, had sold shares in a depleted silver mine in Utah to unsuspecting British investors who poured $5 million into the sham company. In January 1872, Stewart and the other American investors who were in the scam sold their shares for a hefty profit. After a congressional investigation in 1876, no one was ever charged with any crime. 

William Morris Stewart.  Library of Congress

For many years, Stewart’s grand house—or Stewart’s Castle, as it was known—was the most magnificent private home in the city. But it was often jokingly referred to as “Stewart’s Folly” as it was so far away from everything, standing in an open commons in the midst of the former Hopkins brickyard. Yet after the building was completed, land that had been selling for ten cents a square foot was now demanding three to four dollars a square foot. Sadly, Stewart was no longer a member of the real estate pool and did not reap the benefits of the soaring real estate prices that the construction of his house had spawned.

Still, the Stewarts reveled in their new home, which became a center of social activity, and Annie Stewart’s large dinner parties were legendary. But their time in their new house was to be short-lived. The costs of lavish entertaining and the upkeep of the house and large staff proved too costly for a financially-ailing senator. 

Adding to Stewart’s problems was William Sharon, also a miner originally hailing from Ohio, who at one time was the richest man in California.  Sharon wanted Stewart’s Senate seat, for which he could and would spare no expense to get.   In 1874, Stewart decided not to stand for reelection. He had only occupied his castle for less than two years before deciding to return to the West Coast to practice law again. The castle would remain closed for four years, occupied only by a couple servants and a watchman. With Stewart out of the political picture, Sharon easily won his Senate seat and served only one term, from 1875 to 1881.

In the summer of 1879, Annie Stewart had had enough of the West Coast and returned to Washington without her husband in hopes of recapturing her former place in society. On New Year’s Eve of that year, she headed out to spend the evening with family friends, but she was soon notified that her house was on fire and rushed home to find the upper story in flames. There had been an unseasonably warm winter that year, and the boiler had only recently been turned on to warm the large house. No one had thought to check to see if the system had enough water in it. 

The British minister himself, Sir Edward Norton, and other members of the British Legation from down the street were soon on the scene. Sir Edward took Annie Stewart and a companion back to the British Legation building and then returned to the burning house to help rescue valuables and personal belongings. Most of the silver was saved, the carpets were all safely removed from the first and second floors, as was the gold-finished furniture, oil paintings, large mirrors and lace curtains. But most of the clothing could not be saved.

When it was over, the fire had completely destroyed the upper story of Stewart’s Castle and most of the plaster and woodwork in the interior. Stewart hired local architect and builder Robert Isaac Fleming to restore and fireproof the mansion, with many claiming that the rebuilt mansion was handsomer than it had ever been. Fleming would become a prominent architect in the Dupont Circle neighborhood in the 1880s, as well as wealthy and well-positioned socially.

The drawing room in Stewart's Castle, circa 1883.  Author's collection.

In 1886, a year before Stewart returned to Washington as a senator from Nevada, he rented the castle, now referred to as that “grim old building,” completely furnished to the Chinese Legation in Washington. The Stewarts found temporary accommodations in a rented house on H Street upon their return.

Although the Chinese Legation had been in Washington since 1878, its staff remained quite a curiosity to the local population.  At a time when one avoided hanging their laundry to dry in public, the domestic staff of the legation would take their laundry to Dupont Circle and lay it out in the grass to dry.  Legation staff would be spotted romping around the flower pots in the circle and playing hide and seek in the moonlight. Neighbors had no idea how to react. When the Chinese went out on the balconies of the house for air, crowds would gather and stare, and the police would have to move them along the sidewalk away from the house. 

Chinese Legation staff working in the leased castle.  Library of Congress.

The Chinese ambassador did entertain occasionally in the house, but more modestly than the Stewarts ever did. In 1885, he gave only two dinners—one for U.S. government officials and the diplomatic corps in Washington and the other for his personal friends at the Chinese New Year. Unlike when the Stewarts occupied the house, there was no dancing; the large ballroom was used for opium smoking and conversation.

The Chinese Legation stayed in the castle until 1893, and by the time they left, they had done significant damage. Kitchen staff had been cooking fish on the tiled bathroom floors as they were unaccustomed to stoves and ovens. Opium smokers had burned holes in the expensive European furniture. When the ambassador tired of his guests in the evening and wanted them to leave, he would burn red peppers in the room, which while burning the eyes of the guests, also left heavy smoke stains everywhere. 

Upon inspecting the house after the Chinese delegation had departed, Steward sued them for $15,000 for the damages they had caused.  The Chinese government disputed the claim and hired former Secretary of State and Dupont Circle resident John Watson Foster to represent them.  They finally settled on $3,000, which Steward then used to restore the damage to the mansion.

William Andrews Clark.  Library of Congress.

William Stewart was again elected to the Senate in 1893 and finally moved back into his castle and lived there quietly for another six years. In 1899, he sold the house to Montana Senator William Andrews Clark, also known as the Montana Copper Croesus, at a reported one thousand times the profit of the original cost to construct the house.  Steward relocated to a house at 1800 F Street, NW.  In the end, he finally realized a profit as a result of his early involvement in the real estate pool and his investment in his grand house.  

In 1901, Clark demolished Stewart’s Castle, which he had purchased from William Stewart in 1899. Clark never occupied the castle himself and occasionally donated it for use for charity functions.  

Clark had made his massive fortune in small smelters, electric power companies, newspapers, railroads and newspapers and was known as one of the three “Copper Kings” of Butte, Montana, along with Marcus Daly and F. Augustus Heinze. At the time of his arrival in Washington to fill a Senate seat in 1899, Clark was the wealthiest member of the Senate and one of the two richest men in the United States, rivaled only by John D. Rockefeller at the time. 

Stewart's Castle shortly before it was razed by William Clark in 1901.  Library of Congress.

Unfortunately for Clark, as soon as he had returned to Washington, the news broke that he had bribed members of the Montana state legislature in return for their votes, and the U.S. Senate refused to seat him. But Clark’s second Senate campaign was successful, and he served a single term from 1901 until 1907. In responding to criticism of his bribery of the Montana legislature, Clark is reported to have said, “I never bought a man who wasn’t for sale.” 

 

Mark Twain detested William Clark and in a 1907 essay entitled “Senator Clark of Montana,” he wrote:

"He is as rotten a human being as can be found anywhere under the flag; he is a shame to the American nation, and no one has helped to send him to the Senate who did not know that his proper place was the penitentiary, with a ball and chain on his legs. To my mind he is the most disgusting creature that the republic has produced since Tweed’s time." 

The empty lot on Dupont Circle where Stewart's once stood (upper right hand corner). 
Photo prior to 1921.  Library of Congress.

Clark was undoubtedly inspired by the location and size of the Stewarts’ mansion and was planning on replacing it with something even larger as a statement of his vast wealth. But after a rocky start in Washington politics, he was not certain how long he would be staying in town and therefore probably did not want to invest in a large house and be tied down in the city. Instead, he leased a twenty-room home next door at 1915 Massachusetts Avenue whose eastward-facing windows looked over the huge hole in his empty lot.  The lot, ever increasing in value, was soon surrounded by the mansions of Levi Leiter, Nellie Patterson, Sallie Hitt, and Edson Bradley to name but a few.  Yet, Clark seemed to have had no interest in selling it.

 

William Clark's residence at 1915 Massachusetts Avenue, NW.  Author's collection.

Clark eventually left Washington after his Senate term for the 121-room mansion he did built at 952 on Fifth Avenue in New York City, which was completed in 1907 after ten years of legal disputes. Millionaire senator Winthrop Murray Crane of Massachusetts, who had been residing at the Willard Hotel, then moved into the Massachusetts Avenue house and lived there with his new bride, Josephine Boardman. 

  

Clark's mansion at 952 on Fifth Avenue in New York City.  Library of Congress.

Clark held on to the Stewart Castle lot until 1921, when he finally sold it to an automobile dealership that built a showroom on much of the lot.   In 1922, Riggs Bank built a building to the west of the showroom, later acquiring it and incorporating it into the bank.

Car dealership and Riggs Bank on the former site of Stewart's Castle.

Clark died in his New York City mansion at the age of eighty-six, one of the fifty richest Americans ever. Clark’s New York City home stood for only twenty years and was demolished two years after his death in 1925.

 

Clark had originally willed his $3 million art collection to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York with the condition that a special room be provided to display the collection. Due to a lack of space, the Metropolitan Museum declined the gift, and it was given to the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington. But Clark’s collection was no stranger to the Corcoran. Before his New York mansion was finished, and needing a place to temporarily house his collection, he loaned it to the Corcoran for display. He also donated $100,000 to the Corcoran to endow a prize fund for American artists, with the remainder to be spent on acquiring works by American artists. 

Clark’s youngest daughter, Huguette Marcelle Clark, one of two children from his second marriage, only recently died in 2011 at the age of 104.  In her later years, she was a recluse, living in hospitals for more than twenty years while her mansions, though empty, were meticulously maintained. She left behind a fortune of more than $300 million, most of which was donated to charity. Huguette shared her father’s special affinity for the Corcoran Gallery of Art and bequeathed the gallery one of Claude Monet’s water lilies paintings. But because her will was contested by relatives, the Corcoran lost the painting and received a settlement of $10 million instead.

The site of Stewart's Castle today.  The current corner building still maintains classic early 20th-century architectural automobile showroom characteristics with tall sidewalk to ceiling windows for an unobstructed view into the showroom.