Lost Washington: The Leiter House
The residence at 1500 New Hampshire Ave. was designed by architect Theophilus Chandler and built in 1891 for Levi Leiter, a Chicago real estate and department store millionaire. The Leiter house was a white brick, classically inspired mansion with a red tile roof located at the intersection of Dupont Circle, New Hampshire Avenue, and 19th Street. Considered the finest private residence in Washington at the time it was built, the mansion was three stories with fifty-five rooms.
Levi Leiter, along with Potter Palmer, entered into a partnership with Marshall Field to create the department store Field, Palmer and Leiter in 1865. Palmer retired form the firm in 1867 to persue other interests. As Leiter began spending all of his time investing in Chicago real estate, he sold his interest in the department store toField in 1881, which were worth $6 million. After his death in 1904, his wfe became a leading Washington hostess with elaborate parties held in the house until World War II.
During the War it was leased for U. S. Government offices, and in 1947 sold and demolished. The Dupont Plaza Hotel was then built on the site.
Washington Kaleidoscope 
April 7, 2009 at 9:42 pm
Wow, check out the polar bear skin rug!
April 7, 2009 at 10:30 pm
I just about cried at this post, thinking about such beauty destroyed for a hotel. So sad no one saw the history and detail in the building.
April 8, 2009 at 6:41 am
Beautiful interior!
April 12, 2009 at 4:02 pm
[…] Ever heard of the Leiter House? Neither had I until reading DC Kaleidoscope’s brief but engaging history of this once very significant Washington residence. […]
April 13, 2009 at 3:03 pm
[…] Then and Now:1500 New Hampshire Ave., NW Then: The Leiter House, built in 1891 for Levi P. Leiter. It was eventually razed in 1947. More information and photos of the house can be found at this post. […]
November 21, 2010 at 3:37 pm
Mrs. Levi Leiter (Mary Theresa Carver Leiter) died in March of 1913. Their son Joseph and his wife Juliette lived in the Washington house. Joseph died in 1932, so it would have been his widow, Juliette Leiter, who was the pre-WW. 2 Washington hostess.
After Levi Leiter’s death, his widow Mary built an ocean front summer home, Edgewater, in Beverly Farms, Massachusetts in 1910. (See Pamela Fox, North Shore Boston: Houses of Essex County, for plans and photos.) After her death Joseph and his family spent summers there. The house stayed in the Leiter family until 1951.
May 22, 2012 at 12:05 pm
Levi Leiter’s daughter Mary (1870-1906) married George Curzon (1859-1925), a promising young British politician, in 1895. Their eleven-year marriage was reportedly a genuinely happy union. In 1895, Curzon was ennobled and appointed Viceroy of British India, and Mary, now Lady Curzon, was enthroned with her husband as Vicereine of India. For seven extraordinary years, they reigned over the Rah in great style from the fabulous Peacock Throne. In 1905, Lord Curzon resigned office after losing a dispute with the British commander in India, the equally legengary Field Marshal Lord Kitchener of Khartoum, and they returned to Britain. Mary bore Curzon three daughters (who led extraordinary lives in their own right), but never fully recovered from a 1904 miscarriage — she died in 1906, just 36 years old. What a remarkable life for a Washington girl, daughter of a Chicago dry goods merchant, who grew up to preside with grace and style over the Court of India at the very height of the British Empire.
January 23, 2013 at 7:35 am
It’s a shame the house was demolished — I would have liked to see where my relatives lived in splendor.
March 11, 2013 at 1:25 pm
Does anyone have a photo of Joseph Leiter’s home that was next to Levi’s mansion on New Hampshire Ave?
February 12, 2016 at 9:25 am
This website certainly has all the information and facts I needed about this subject and didn’t know who to ask.
February 25, 2017 at 7:55 pm
Supplemental Information:
About 1873-74 Blaine built himself a new and elegant residence. It is located at the intersection of Massachusetts Avenwue and P & 20th Sts, west of DuPont Circle, Washington, D.C. Later it was the home of George Westinghouse. Blaine’s other residence was a house at 518 West 15th Street. He lived there during the first ten years of his congressional career. The DuPont Circle house was expensive and showy, but for some reason was never admired or much occupied by the owner. It got the name “Blaine’s Folly”. He spent about $85,000 on the house, subsequently rented it to Levi Leiter for $12,000 per year. It is thought that the assassination of Garfield and Blaine’s consequent resignation from the Cabinet that led his abandonment of the DuPont Circle house. With the election of Harrison, Blaine was appointed Secretary of State, he took up residence at his other residence in the Seward house on 15th Street at Lafayette Square and remained there almost constantly until his death.
Levi Leiter lived in the Blaine house probably during the construction of his mansion on DuPont Circle.
November 8, 2020 at 1:20 pm
The worst of the worst outrages of senseless destruction in my city, along with Henderson’s Castle & Corcoran House. She made some structure across from Lafayette Park look like the crumbling bleach colored shack that it is in comparison. All of these plus many others were gone before my time so all I have is sadly b&w pictures to look at – but some beats none. Still having that glorified nursing home perched in her place all these decades later stands as glaring commentary on The Stupidity Of The Waste – why the Leiter House which was hardly some condemned barn couldn’t have been converted into a”truly elegant” hotel instead of that horror house in its place resounds with the ignorance of the tumes. And the R. R. Hitt House across the street since replaced by an even uglier excrement colored monstrosity rudely towering over Miss Cissy’s house likewise has ruined the original elegance of Dupont Circle. Even the oddshaped building @ 21 manages not to be repulsive, & me largely hating modern architecture – the latter-day inelegant oversized boxes littering the landscape of Washington are resounding proof of that – that’s praise indeed. The poo building may be a lost cause but why somebody hasn’t, if not pulled down that blasted nursing home, contrived to spruce it up – to an approximation of the Leiter House might be stretching prayers too far – to something easily easier to look at (& a different name too) is Most Unfortunate. I just fervently hope that most of what’s left makes it through the next several decades & do not similarly end up plowed under for more … “architecturally undistinguished” crap. In the timeless words of Spock himself, “I believe we’ve had enough of*that*! for a very long time.
November 8, 2020 at 1:47 pm
There are many examples of older structures being demolished when many of them were good candidates for re-purposing.
A really good example is the Reading Railroad Station in Harrisburg, PA.