Mansions, Parks, and People 2437 15TH STREET NW
At 2 437 51 th S tr ee t is the Josephine Butler Parks Center, home of Washington Parks & People, a network of groups devoted to DC and its parks. This 1 9 2 7 mansion, which once housed the Hun-garian delegation, was part of an embassy row envisioned by Mary Foote Henderson for this area. Henderson built a “castle” across 1 6th Street for her family, and commissioned important arch-itects to create an enclave worthy of important residents. Meridian Hill Park was also a result of her influence. In the 1 98 0 s, the park (by then also called Malcolm X Park) had become forbidding and dangerous, and the mansion was vacant. Then Friends of Meridian Hill Park came together in 1 99 0 . By the end of the decade, when Parks & People bought the mansion, the park again thrived. The first phase of the National Park Service’s restoration of the park to its original design was completed in spring 002 9. The Parks Center, housing nonprofit groups, honors Josephine Butler ( 1 9 20–1 997), a union and political activist and educator who led Washington Parks & People at the time of her death. At the corner of Euclid Street is the Embassy of Ecuador, formerly the Netherlands Embassy. On the way to Sign 1 7 is the Warder-Totten House at 2 633 1 6th Street. George Oakley Totten, Jr., archi- tect of the Parks Center, salvaged parts of a house designed by his teacher, renowned architect H.H. Richardson, and rebuilt it here in the 1 9 20 s. It is the only Richardson building left in Washington.
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