This is the story of two really, really close sisters who once owned adjoining and interconnecting houses on Dupont Circle form several decades.
The bright yellow Sun Trust bank building located at the
corner of Connecticut Avenue on the south side of Dupont Circle has been
providing time and temperature for local commuters for decades. Its recent lavish paint scheme unfortunately
covers what was a highly ornamented brick pattern designed into the building
when it was built in 1912 (seen below). It replaced
one half of an unusual double house originally built on the site in 1880 for
two apparently very close sisters.
The U. S. Trust Company hired architect Jules Henry De
Sibour to design the corner bank building, which began construction in
September of 1912. It was built by the
F. J. Nesbit Company at an estimated cost of $50,000 and featured a complex
design of different colored bricks with granite trim and a clay tile roof. It later became the Dupont National Bank
Building, pictured here about 1925, and the Guardian National Bank, along with
other institutional names in subsequent years.
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| The Miller House (right) and Hopkins House (left) adjoined between the two chimneys at left |
The pair of adjoining houses previously located on the site,
at the intersection of Massachusetts and Connecticut Avenues facing Dupont
Circle, had been built beginning in March of 1880. Built for two sisters, Charlotte E. and
Katherine Wise, it is unusual in that each of the three levels shared balconies
facing Dupont Circle, one on each floor, with each having doors that led to
each individual house.
The adjoining
houses, however, were each built with separate building permits at an estimated
cost of $9,000 each. Two years after
they were completed, the owners no doubt stood on the balcony to watch the
unveiling of the Admiral DuPont statue in the center of the circle on December
10, 1884.
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| The Dupont Bank Building with the Hopkins House seen at left, sans adjoing balconies |
This arrangement might have decreased future resale value in
today’s market, but it allowed the sisters to interact and pass into each
others houses without having to venture outside. The sisters were the daughters of Capt. H. A.
and Charlotte Everett Wise. The homes
were designed by architect J. Cleveland Cady (1837-1919) of the Cady-Gregory
firm in New York. Cady was a student of
Henry Hobson Richardson, the leading architect of the post Civil War era in the
country, and is perhaps best known for his Metropolitan Opera House design. The houses were built by Robert I.
Fleming.
