National Register of Historic Places Registration Form

NPS Form 10-900-a OMB Approval No. 1024-0018
(M6)
United States Department of the Interior
National Park Service
National Register of Historic Places
Continuation Sheet
CLEVELAND PARK HISTORIC DISTRICT
WASHINGTON D.C.
Section number 8 Rage 22
for the park, and have been carefully and honestly built. They are recognized
as the most beautiful and artistic homes in the District. In fact, they are
known and spoken of far beyond the limits of the District for their beauty and
originality." *(Cleveland Park, Moore and Hill (Incorporated), Exclusive
Agents, 1904, pp. 6, 10, & 14)
These houses are large frame structures resembling rambling summer
cottages with expansive porches and numerous Queen Anne and Shingle Style
details such as turrets, towers, oriel and bay windows, steep gables, tall
pilastered chimneys and windows of all shapes and sizes. Summer houses for
the wealthy, and suburban houses for the middle class, were the two fastest
growing areas of housing design during the last two decades of the 19th
century. The same architects were designing houses for both needs, and the
houses were being published in the architectural journals and in the more
popular magazines, like The Ladies Home Journal. Consequently, it is not
surprising that there was some overlap, and many of the suburban homes have
features reminiscent of the summer homes built by the sea. In both cases the
architects were designing for people who were looking for an escape from the
crowded, polluted, and unsanitary city centers. For some individuals it was
an escape for the summer, for others it was a permanent upgrading of their
living conditions. The people moving to the suburbs were seeking a better
life, more like that enjoyed by the wealthy, so houses which resembled those
owned by the more privileged were appealing.
This point is important for Cleveland Park, because it has often been
said that the houses in this neighborhood were designed as summer homes.
Research has proven that this is not true. The houses designed and built
after 1894 were intended as permanent year-round residences. Grover
Cleveland's home, Oak View, Gardiner Greene Hubbard's home, Twin Oaks, and a
cottage on the Twin Oaks' grounds for Charles Bell and his wife (who was
Hubbard's daughter) were the only houses known to have been built solely as
summer homes in the area known today as Cleveland Park, and they were built
prior to the laying out of the subdivisions.
Paul J. Pelz and F.W. Carlyle were the first architects to design houses
for the Cleveland Park Company. Paul Pelz (1841-1918), the better known of
the two, was born and educated In Silesia, Prussia, Germany. His family moved
to New York where he served an apprenticeship with the Danish architect, Delef
Lienau. He came to Washington in 1866. In conjunction with John Smithmyer,
he won the competition for the design of the new Library of Congress Building
in 1886. He was also responsible for the design of Healy Hall at Georgetown
University. The houses Pelz and Carlyle designed in Cleveland Park represent
the early and freer phase of the Colonial Revival Style. These houses are an
eclectic mixture of Georgian decorative details combined with medieval
building forms such as towers ana oriels.
Frederick Bennett Pyle (1867-1934) was born in London Grove, Pennsylvania
and studied engineering for two years at Swarthmore College. He settled in
Washington in 1891 and became a prolific architect. He worked for the
Cleveland Park Company in 1896 during which time he built three houses, all of
which share similar curvilinear shapes and Federal decorative details,