What the Seward Mansion Main Hall May Have Looked Like

[Linda Anderson]

I found a photo of the main hall in Dumbarton House in Georgetown in a wonderful blog called "Big Old Houses" by John Foreman. The Georgetown Dames bought it in 1928 and, "in the name of architectural purity, and with the guidance of Fiske Kimball of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, stripped away a century of accumulated architectural charm. Quoins, balustrades, 12 over 12 windows, french doors, and any and everything not correct to the 18th century were chucked, and a period correct, rather stern, and newly renamed Dumbarton House was born."

http://www.newyorksocialdiary.com/node/1911520

The photo of the main or lower hall looks a great deal to me like what the lower hall in the Seward Mansion/Old Clubhouse would have looked like at the time of Lewis Powell's attack on William Seward. The Seward Mansion had a wide central hallway with large rooms opening on either side and a doorway in the back of the hall leading to the back yard. The staircase went up half a flight with a window at the landing and then turned to go up to the second floor. It appears that the stairway is on the right side of the upper hall in photos taken in Seward's time so Betty kindly reversed the image for me.

A Sept 22, 1889 Boston Herald article titled, "House of the Blaines," describes "Two slender columns on either side [that] support an arch which divides the front from the back part of the hall." The columns and arch may have been added by the Blaines when they renovated the house or, like the Dumbarton House, they may have been original to the house.

Chief Justice Cartter described running out of his house so quickly when he heard the news of Seward being attacked that he left without his hat. Before he drove to the Petersen House where Lincoln lay dying, Cartter grabbed a hat off the rack in Seward's lower hall. (Feb. 9, 1889 Evening Star.)

Now if Lewis Powell hadn't been in such a rush to get away, he might have grabbed a hat as well and saved himself the trouble of making a hat out of his shirt sleeve.