The Oldest House newton street between 18th and 19th streets nw
Ingleside, the grand house at 1818 Newton Street, once anchored a 139-acre estate. Thomas Ustick Walter (1804–1887), architect of portions of the U.S. Capitol, designed Ingleside in 1851. Today it is Mount Pleasant’s oldest structure. New York Congressman Hiram Walbridge bought Ingleside in 1854, and his family kept it for more than 30 years. Among the estate’s residents were Hiram’s stepdaughter Helen and her attorney husband, George Corkhill, known to history as the man who prosecuted President James Garfield’s assassin in 1881. The Walbridge heirs sold the house and some acreage in 1889. When Frank Noyes, the powerful editor of Washington’s most important newspaper, the Evening Star, bought the house, an alley ran where the front lawn had been. So Noyes switched the front of the house for the back. Later the Presbyterian Home for Aged Women and then Stoddard Baptist Home occupied Ingleside. Also on this block are two houses that were moved here in 1902–1903, when the city extended 16th Street. The owners of 1821 relocated from what is now the intersection of 15th, 16th and Irving streets. The house at 1886 came from the northeast corner of 16th and Park. In 1913 art dealer and real estate speculator Fred C. Hays constructed 1833, 1835, and 1837 Newton Street (still in the family in 2006). As you proceed to Sign 9, notice that some of the rowhouses on 19th Street become narrower. They were part of a new phase of affordable residential building after World War I ended in 1918.
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