The oldest of the three historic buildings is the Madison House, built around 1820. After the death of the fourth President, his widow devoted the proceeds of the sale of the Madison papers to restoring the mansion and she occupied it until her death in 1849. During the Civil War it was used as one of the headquarters of the Army of the Potomac under Gen. George McClellan and Union soldiers camped right in the park. Today the building is occupied by one of the Government's newest agencies, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

The other historic residence on the block was built in 1828 by Benjamin Ogle Tayloe and later owned by a succession of high-ranking capital leaders. When Senator Mark Hanna, the celebrated power behind the throne of the McKinley administration, lived there it was known as the Little White House.

Tayloe, whose father was a wealthy Virginia planter and a close friend of George Washington, collected antiques from throughout the world for his home and during his lifetime the house was frequented by the leading diplomats and political figures of the day.

PROPOSED RESTORATION

The Belasco Theater was opened in 1895 as the Lafayette Square Opera House, and Lillian Russell, Sarah Bernhardt, Julia Marlowe, and Maude Adams, among others, performed there. One proposal aimed at preserving the historic atmosphere of the square calls for the restoration of the Belasco for use as a repertory theater.

Whether the efforts to save the square will succeed remains to be seen, but as the Washington Post and Times Herald pointed out in a recent editorial, the decision should have been made long ago to preserve the residential character which predominated around the square until World War I.

"With a little more foresight, the square could have remained a pleasant patch of the past," the paper noted. "Our grandchildren may well reproach us for failing as guardians of a heritage worth saving."

[From the Washington Post, Friday, July 1, 1960]

THE TEXANS VERSUS LAFAYETTE SQUARE
(By Drew Pearson)

It isn't Senator Lyndon Johnson's fault, but some of his fellow Texans aren't building up any good will for Texas in the Nation's Capital. This includes Speaker Sam Rayburn, Lyndon's campaign manager.

Two Texans have just maneuvered to disrupt the colonial architecture of the most historic square in America with a modern new brick and glass court building, chiefly because one of them wants to walk to work.

The Texan who wants to walk to work is Judge Marvin Jones, of Amarillo, Sam Rayburn's brother-in-law, who wants a new Court of Claims building erected in place of the historic Dolly Madison Mansion, the Benjamin D. Tayloe House, and the old Belasco Theater on Lafayette Square, diagonally opposite the White House.

The Dolly Madison Mansion, where the wife of the fourth President gave some of her gayest parties, is one of the oldest colonial houses in Washington. The Belasco Theater is being proposed as a small-scale opera house in the one major capital of the world which has no opera house at all.

However, Judge Jones lives at the University Club, a few blocks away, on 16th Street. And it obviously was more convenient for him to have his new court building within walking distance.

The judge can also walk across the square to the Metropolitan Club for lunch, then back to the University Club to play bridge.

TEXANS AND REPUBLICANS

Another Texan close to Sam Rayburn is Eugene Worley, judge of the Customs and Patent Appeals Court. He, too, wants to tear down the Dolly Madison Mansion, et al., in favor of a modern court edifice.

These two Texans, who have influence with the Democrats, were joined by Republican Judge I. Jack Martin, also of the Customs and Patent Appeals Court. Martin was Senator Taft's assistant and former White House contact man with

Congress, so has influence with both the White House and congressional Republicans.

So, although every civic-minded organization in the Nation's Capital went to bat for the preservation of Lafayette Square, these two Texans plus one Taft Republican proceeded to get their way.

At first, however, the White House balked. Conscientious Franklin Floete, head of General Services and in charge of public building, testified that he had an alternate site in Southwest Washington. Furthermore, Floete said the new site would hold three courts instead of two. At Lafayette Square site it would mean an uncomfortable squeeze to include the U.S. Tax Court, which has to move anyway. The two Texas judges aren't interested in it, however. The head of the Tax Court, Judge Edgar Murlock, isn't from Texas; has no political pull.

Immediately after Floete urged another site, the two Texas judges got panicky. Judge Jones phoned Carl Levin, head of the Citizens' Committee To Save Lafayette Square, offered to make a deal.

"You can keep the Belasco Theater," he proposed, "but let us take the Dolly Madison House and the Benjamin Tayloe House." Levin rejected the deal. "The people of Washington aren't interested in a barter deal," Levin replied. "We're interested in preserving the most historic square in America." Levin later explained to friends.

At this point the Republican judge, Jack Martin, began pulling wires with old friends in the White House. Suddenly Floete found the ground being cut from under him.

"You'll have to get a lot of support to make my proposal stick," he confided to civic leaders.

They got a lot of support-from 30 top civic organizations. But Judge Martin got more from the White House. Floete, a Republican, was told to reverse himself. Ike, he was told, favored the demolition of the historic buildings on Lafayette Square.

MORE TEXANS

Last week another Texan, Sam Rayburn, pushed a $5 million appropriation through the House to buy up two city blocks to make room for an expansion of congressional buildings. Similtaneously the House Appropriations Committee told the District of Columbia, in effect, to jump in the Potomac when it came to building four badly needed schools. On the same day, Senator Dennis Chavez, of New Mexico, put through an appropriation of $40,000 to build a new swimming pool for Senators. Chavez is the chairman of the Public Works Committee, who is helping his neighbors from Texas to raze the historic buildings on Lafayette Square. On the same day, another Texan, charming Albert Thomas, of Houston, knocked $2.8 million off the cost of building a sewer from the new Dulles Airport. At the same time, the same Congressman Thomas was angling with the Interior Department to turn part of Normanstone Park, which is National Capital Parks land opposite the British Embassy, over to the ladies of Congress and their Congressional Club. These wives of Congressmen would not have to pay for the Government land.

[From the Washington Post, Washington, D.C., Sunday, June 12, 1960]

THE BEAUTIFUL BELASCO RATES PROMPT ATTENTION

(By Paul Hume)

Although it has been known as the Belasco Theater for many years, there are letters carved in stone over the door of the building that stands on the east side of Lafayette Square that read "Lafayette Square Opera House."

One of the extremely rare errors I have ever found in my favorite reference book, Oscar Thompson's edition of the "International Cyclopedia of Music and Musicians," the Belasco Theater is named as the scene of the first American performance of an opera you have all heard of, "Madam Butterfly." Actually that premiere took place over on F Street, in the Columbia Theater.

Quite possibly the reason for the error can be found in the review which appeared in the Washington Post of October 16, 1906, the day after the premiere. In the first paragraph of the review the writer correctly locates the opera in

the Columbia. Some paragraphs later she refers to the beautifully dressed audience that gathered to hear the Puccini work for the first time in the Belasco Theater.

No matter. What is important to us today is that in the same week that the first American audiences were hearing Puccini's opera, an event that preceded its Metropolitan Opera debut by nearly 4 months, the Belasco Theater was being advertised in the Washington Post as the home of a series of concerts to be given by the Boston Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Karl Muck. The same year was to see the Philadelphia Orchestra in its annual series, given in the National Theater.

Solo artists appearing that year included Schumann-Heink, Moriz Rosenthal, Nordica, and dozens more. Many of these artists and many of the largest visiting ensembles that came to Washington appeared in the Belasco Theater.

It is a building with a unique location. Imagine a beautiful lyric theater, fully capable of housing opera, ballet, and concerts, facing one of the loveliest squares in Washington, a theater to which the President of the United States could walk in 2 minutes, and to which he could take his guests for a rich evening's entertainment.

This theater is standing. It is not waiting to be built. To remodel it completely and put it into absolutely first-class condition, ready for the world's great artists and performing ensembles would cost not any millions of dollars. Not even $5 or $3 or even $1 million. Architects, designers, opera and theater planners have gone over the Belasco and have stated that it could be completely restored for around three-quarters of a million dollars.

In the meantime the White House has asked Congress to appropriate $12 million for half of the cost of a Freedom Wall. And we are wondering how and where to begin raising the $75 million that is set as the cost of a national center for the performing arts. Other millions have been suggested as the cost of memorials for Franklin Delano Roosevelt and for the still living Herbert Hoover. It now appears that New York City will be fortunate enough to enjoy life in its new Lincoln Center, and also providently to retain Carnegie Hall as well. Washington, which at present has none of the theater and concert facilities that were available to this city in 1906, will never reach a point where a restored Belasco Theater will not be a great asset, even when the National Cultural Center is completed.

In the meantime, how is it possible that anything can long obstruct the necessary authority and financing of what could be one of our country's finest theaters, and one that is so sorely needed day after day? A nod from the White House, and we could look forward to concerts, operas, and ballets in a beautiful setting, in time for the beginning of the season of 1961-62. Here's to the reopening of the Lafayette Square Opera House, attended by the next President of the United States.

[From the Washington (D.C.) Star, May 8, 1960]

OUR BELASCO THEATER DESERVES A BREAK

(By Day Thorpe)

At the first meeting of the Citizens Committee To Save Lafayette Square last week, 30 or 40 people gathered together to effect their common purpose of forestalling the destruction of the buildings on the east side of the front yard of the White House. They were motivated by sundry sentiments-nostalgia, distaste for Government gothic, the sense of history, and a desire for a new operating theater in the near future. Bills are now before Congress to save the Lafayette Square Opera House (later called the Belasco Theater) and to restore it to the condition it was in when purchased by the Government in 1940. To have strength, such a movement should enjoy singleness of purpose inspired by a variety of incentives. Fortunately, everybody wanted to save the old block of buildings and there was no common reason advanced why the rescue is necessary, nor any universal attestation to the beauty of the street. Some found the Belasco only potentially utilitarian, while to me it also is beautiful, although obviously not to be classed with our temporary buildings on the Mall, presently under no sentence of destruction.

DOUBTS AS TO HISTORY

What was most curious to me, however, was the doubt whether the Belasco could be rebuilt into a first-rate theater-whether in fact it had ever been one. There was a general impression that the theater, built in 1895, became an oddity, a durable relic, in 1896, or shortly thereafter. When I remembered Barrymore as Hamlet in the Belasco in the early 1920's, it was suggested that I was thinking of the Poli's.

I am no antiquarian, but I was certain that I recalled scores if not hundreds of shows I had seen at the Belasco in my youth. Opera, Broadway shows, and even a resident company dedicated to weekly productions of musical comedy. Three or four of the yellowest clippings in a fat file on the theater here at the Star extended my memory backward two-decades. Whatever the Belasco may not have, it has a history.

The Lafayette Square Opera House opened on September 30, 1895, with a production of the opera "La Tzigane," written by Reginald de Koven for Lillian Russell. The show was warmly received and the theater greatly admired, though the Star critic notes that Miss Russell's first solo "is not so satisfying as it should be." The cant of criticism is not new.

A HOST OF THE GREAT

Francesca Lawson, who was at last week's meeting, remarked that she had sung Micaela in "Carmen" at the Belasco, and that she had heard Tetrazzini there. The Star files confirm her memory-not only Tetrazzini, but Caruso. Schumann-Heink, Jenny Lind, and Amato sang there. It was the Washington home of the Metropolitan Opera, the "swankiest place in all Washington," according to John J. Daly, in an article in the Star published in 1940. Helen Hayes and Ruth Chatterton both made their debuts at the Belasco. Ina Claire was often there; also David Warfield, Mae West, Weber and Fields, Walter Hampden, De Wolfe Hopper, John Drew, Maude Adams, Edna Wallace Hopper (from whom all proper young boys of my generation hoped we could learn about sex-a misconception curiously based on the fact that her shows were advertised "for women only"), Will Rogers, Al Jolson, and probably many others.

Ziegfeld first saw Will Rogers at the Belasco, and signed him immediately in his dressing room for the Follies. A story about Rogers of that time shows that all his jokes were not wildly funny and also that Eisenhower is not the first to find that many Americans believe a President on a golf course to be somehow incongruous with proper decorum.

WILL ROGERS VERSUS HARDING

"Will Rogers that week," recounts the old Star clipping, "encountered the first and only objection to his humor, which was registered from the White House. Among his drolleries was this: "The American public will never get much accomplished until they get a President who gets seasick and who can't play golf.' * * *

"A Secret Service man called at the Belasco and conveyed word that the White House would appreciate it if Mr. Rogers would eliminate the joke. As it was an important part of his routine and got appreciative audience response, Rogers refused."

Several months later when Rogers was in town in another Ziegfeld show he tried to get an invitation to a White House reception and "was politely informed none was available." Whereupon, Rogers added a few lines not in the script to his next performance. "All my life I have been making humorous observations and comments about the great and the near-great. Invariably, they have accepted it in a spirit of fun and with an appreciation that no malice was intended. I regret that I have offended President Harding, but I can also say he is the first prominent man to publicly object to my stage liberties. I am sorry he can't take a joke."

Later in his career, I suspect, Rogers would either have left it out or tightened it up, but nevertheless the incident is perhaps an indication that our Presidents, among whom Harding, Wilson, Coolidge, and Hoover were fans of the Belasco, do not invariably find a theater at the front door of the White House an unmitigated blessing. I, for one, devoutly hope that future Presidents will have an opportunity to give the Belasco another chance.

[From the Washington Post, Tuesday, May 24, 1960]

CONCERTED EFFORT MAY SAVE SQUARE

Representative Frank Thompson, Jr., Democrat of New Jersey, warned yesterday that "highway builders are charging through Washington's historic sections to build more offices for bureaucrats." He said that "there will have to be a concerted effort to save Lafayette Square."

Thompson spoke at a meeting at which Mrs. E. Morgan Pryse, a member of the District of Columbia bar, was elected president of the District of Columbia Federation of Women's Clubs.

Thompson, one of the prime movers for the National Cultural Center, also suggested that should its cost of $75 million delay complete construction in the near future, a plan to go ahead and build it a unit at a time, for immediate use, might be an answer to the problem.

Mrs. Pryse, currently the federation's parliamentarian, is a former president of the Marietta Women's Club and also serves as second vice president of the Entre Nous Club.

Mrs. Pryse was the choice of the federation's nominating committee and was unopposed when the committee presented her name as presidential candidate a month ago.

All women whom Mrs. Pryse selected for her cabinet were in turn endorsed by the clubs of which they are members, preceding the nominating committee's report.

This group, elected yesterday with Mrs. Pryse, at a meeting at the Willard Hotel are:

Mrs. Leonard W. Thomas, first vice president; Woodbridge Book Club. Mrs. Paul W. Burke, second vice president; Takoma Park Women's Club. Mrs. Andrew G. Weaver, Sr., recording secretary; Petworth Women's Club. Mrs. Robert Eugene Bell, assistant recording secretary; Association of Philippine-American Women.

Mrs. Jerry Ness, corresponding secretary; Sportsettes Club.

Mrs. George H. Foster, assistant corresponding secretary; Entre Nous Club. Mrs. Francis Irving Brook, treasurer; Pro Bonata Club.

Mrs. James G. Stephanson, assistant treasurer; Southeast Women's Club. Officers will be installed on June 27.

The Navy Mothers Club reported on its history through the years; and it was also announced that the family of Mrs. Stephan Wasile, a member of the Southeast Women's Club, has been selected as the District of Columbia All America Family of the Year. They will fly to Florida on Tuesday for the national competition.

[From the Washington Post, Sunday, Dec. 25, 1960]

CHEERS ARE DUE CAPITAL'S THEATERS
(By Richard L. Coe)

Christmas greetings-and especially to our town's theaters. sonalities, too.

They have per

Historically there's Ford's. Senator Milton Young (Republican, of North Dakota), has been giving it his special care and in time, thanks to the initial push of Melvin D. Hildreth this will get back to its old look of that historic 1865 night.

Not much has changed since 1865 in the way of getting theater tickets. That Good Friday afternoon the Lincolns planned to go that night to see Adah Mencken in "Mazeppa," but someone piously recognized that a bareback riding queen was hardly the thing for that evening. So a messenger was dispatched to change the tickets of the White House party from the National to 10th Street. If you want to buy theater tickets now it's much the same kind of effort though the phone has been invented since.

But queen of our lot remains the National haunted backstage with the ghost of a murdered minor actor, the National's been rolling along on this spot (in five different buildings) since 1835 and all players in America look forward to playing there. Ultimately there may be confusion between the National and the National Cultural Center but change the name of the National? That wouldn't sit well with true Washingtonians—or our savvy taxi drivers. Next year let's find a new word for culture. That one's a self-conscious dog.