Eleanor (Cissy) Patterson: The First Female Newspaper Titan (15 Dupont Circle)

The white marble mansion at number 15 Dupont Circle is the last of the grand mansions that once stood immediately around Dupont Circle.  It is probably best known now as the home of newspaper heiress and titan Eleanor Josephine Medill (“Cissy”) Patterson.

15 Dupont Circle in 1927.  Library of Congress

Ten years after Levi Leiter had finished building his palatial house on New Hampshire Avenue, fellow Chicagoans Robert and Elinor “Nellie” Patterson would follow their lead and take the first steps in moving to and and joining the ranks of Washington high society.  

Soon after the Pattersons arrived in Washington, they built the gleaming, white marble, Beaux Arts–style mansion on Dupont Circle.  Completed in 1903, the mansion was designed by Stanford White, name partner in the prominent New York architectural firm of McKim, Mead, and White for Cissy's mother, Elinor “Nellie” (Medill) Patterson of Chicago.  It is one of two extant buildings designed by White in Washington.  The other building is the home of Thomas Nelson Page that is also still standing at 1759 R Street Northwest.  

Patterson mansion, photo circa 1900.  Library of Congress (colorized by the author)

Nellie Patterson was the daughter of Joseph Medill, editor and publisher of the Chicago Tribune, who had Stanford White also design his daughter’s house in Chicago. When Nellie decided to follow other Chicago parvenus to Washington, DC at the turn of the century, she asked Stanford White to design her new house there as well.  Nellie had two children, Joseph Medill, and Eleanor (“Cissy”).  In 1923, she deeded the mansion to Cissy, then the Countess Gizycki. 

When Cissy Patterson first came to Washington to visit her mother during school holidays, she—along with President Roosevelt’s daughter Alice and Marguerite “Maggie” Cassini, the "ward" (in actuality, his daughter) of the Russian ambassador—was one of the leading young lights in Washington society. The trio, known as the "Three Graces," was only the tip of a social iceberg of younger members of official society and the younger smart set.  Also numbered among them were Martha Wadsworth’s niece Nelka Smirnoff, Mathilde Townsend, Katherine Elkins, the Patten sisters and Charles Bell’s two daughters, Grace and Helen.  But, Cissy’s early friendship with Alice Roosevelt later developed into an ongoing sometimes comical, sometimes bitter feud between the two across Dupont Circle.

 

Eleanor “Cissy” Patterson. Library of Congress

When Cissy’s uncle Robert McCormick was named ambassador to Austria-Hungary in 1901, she accompanied him to Vienna where she met and fell in love with Polish Count Josef Gizycki.  The two were married in Washington on April 14, 1904.

After they were married, Cissy returned with the Count Gizycki to his home in what was then Russian Poland. The Count turned out be a gambler and womanizer, violent with his servants, as well as with Cissy.  When Cissy finally decided to call it quits, she fled with their only child Felicia to London.  The Count had the girl kidnapped and hid her in an Austrian convent demanding a million dollars in ransom. Cissy filed for a divorce, which took thirteen years to obtain. President William Howard Taft and Czar Nicholas II of Russia both intervened in the 18-month effort to secure the release of Felicia. The Czar ordered the Count to return the child to her mother. Gizycki was imprisoned, and reportedly never contacted Cissy or his daughter again.

In 1920, Cissy began writing for her brother Joseph’s paper the New York Daily News as well as working for William Randolph Hearst.   In 1930, her husband of only four years, Elmer Schlesinger, died and she legally changed her name to Mrs. Eleanor Medill Patterson.  That same year, Hearst made her editor of both the Washington Herald and the evening Washington Times.  By 1936, the circulation of the Herald had doubled to 120,000.  Cissy ultimately bought both papers from Hearst in 1939 and merged them into the new Times-Herald.

Cissy Patterson.  Library of Congress

Cissy and Alice Roosevelt Longworth had maintained a tenuous friendship since their teenage years, One evening at a dinner party hosted by the Longworths,  Alice supposed caught Cissy and Alice’s husband Nicholas  on the floor of an upstairs bathroom, with the light on and the door unlocked. Alice retaliated by having a lasting affair with Senator William Edgar Borah, with whom Cissy had also been having an affair, but Alice won out.  The affair produced a child, Paulina.

During the summer of 1927, 15 Dupont Circle became the “summer White House” for President and Mrs. Coolidge while the executive mansion was undergoing extensive repairs.  While at the house, the Coolidges hosted aviator Charles Lindbergh after his famous transatlantic flight.  

Patterson knew how to run a successful paper.  She broadened the audience of the Times-Herald and doubled its circulation.  She hired women reporters and helped launch the careers of Adela Rogers St. Johns and Martha Blair.  In 1936, she was invited to join the American Society of Newspaper Editors. 

The ballroom in the Patterson Mansion (1970).  Photo: U.S. Commission on Fine Arts

In 1948 at the age of 66, alienated from her friends and daughter, Cissy had turned to alcohol, and died of a heart attack at her Maryland home, the  Mt. Airy mansion near Rosaryville, in Prince Georges County, Maryland.  The Dupont Circle house was left to the American Red Cross, and in 1951 it was purchased by the Washington Club as its new headquarters.  In 1956, the Washington Club constructed a two-story addition on the east side of the mansion.

In February 2014, real estate developer SB-Urban purchased the mansion.  In partnership with CBD LLC, a District-based real estate investment firm and Hartman-Cox Architects, in August 2015 the two companies undertook a project to renovate the mansion.   The 1956 addition was razed and replaced to provide for 92 micro-apartments with shared living space, an on-site chef providing meals, meeting space, a private wine cellar, and a fully staffed private bar in the mansion's ballroom.  The Ampeer Dupont Circle apartments opened in 2017.  The verdict is still out as to whether or not the micro-apartment model will ultimately succeed in DC. 

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Copyright (c) 2020. Stephen A. Hansen. All Rights Reserved.