The large yellow house at the southwest corner of Market (33rd) and Second (O) Streets is where Thomas E. Waggaman lived in the nineties. He built an addition on the west as an art gallery for his collection of pictures. It is now a separate house. Here, some years ago, lived Jouett Shouse at the time he formed his Liberty League. Recently, Colonel and Mrs. Alf Heiberg made it their home. They placed an eagle over the door and called it "Federal House."
Right across the street stood a dear old house some years ago. It was white, with double piazzas all the way across the front. The yard was enclosed by a paling fence and from the gate a double border of box led to the door. It was the home of Dr. Hezekiah Magruder.
About 1833 the family of Admiral James Hogan Sands lived there. William Franklin Sands, author of Undiplomatic Memories was one of his sons. The old house was torn down about 1890.
Across the street, at number 3318, is the home of Mr. and Mrs. David E. Finley. He is the Director of the National Gallery of Art.
Number 3322 is the interesting old house where, in the forties and fifties lived Baron Bodisco, Minister from Russia to the United States. He had a very romantic marriage of which I shall tell later. Just before the marriage he purchased this house from Sally Van Devanter, who had inherited it in 1840 from her husband, Christopher Van Devanter, apparently, the builder of the house. Baron Bodisco, the same day he bought it, gave it to his fiancée, Harriet Beall Williams. Whether it was a wedding gift or whether, as a foreign envoy, he could not hold property, I do not know. She kept the property for twenty years until her remarriage to Captain Douglas Scott, when it was bought by Abraham H. Herr. During the Civil War, it was headquarters for the officers of the Second U. S. Regiment, whose enlisted men were quartered in Forrest Hall.
Bodisco House
But to return to the period when it was owned and occupied by the Van Devanter family. During these years, they apparently had a most interesting guest, Mrs. Henry Lee, the widow of "Light Horse Harry," and the mother of Robert E. Lee. In Dr. Douglas Freeman's book R. E. Lee, he quotes two letters from Mrs. Lee written not long before her death from "Georgetown." She did not specify where she was, but Mrs. Beverley Kennon, many years afterwards, said that this was the house in which she resided.
Also, the Van Devanter family, a few years ago, found among old books two books with inscriptions of names of the Lee family, evidently left there during this time.