A manual on the origin and development of Washington

by H. Paul Caemmerer

DEPARTMENT OF STATE BUILDING, 1801

In 1788 the Department of Foreign Affairs moved from Fraunce’s Tavern to a house owned by Philip Livingston, on the west side of Broadway, near the Battery, in New York City. Later it moved to another house on the same street on the opposite side. The Capital having been again located at Philadelphia, the department took up its abode first on Market Street, then on the southeast corner of Arch and Sixth Streets, then in North Alley, and finally at the northeast corner of Fifth and Chestnut Streets, where it remained until it was moved to Washington, except for an interval of three months—from August to November, 1798—when it occupied the statehouse at Trenton, N. J., the office being moved from Philadelphia on account of an epidemic of yellow fever.

On July 27, 1789, the act establishing an executive department to be called the Department of Foreign Affairs was approved; but the Sedgwick Act, approved September 15, 1789, changed this title to the Department of State and that of the principal officer to the Secretary of State. A few days later John Jay, who was Secretary of Foreign Affairs under the Confederation, was nominated to be Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and Thomas Jefferson to be Secretary of State, and both were commissioned on September 26. Jay accepted at once, but continued to discharge the duties of Secretary of State for some months. Under date of October 13 President Washington informed Jefferson of his appointment, and added that Mr. Jay had been so obliging as to continue his good offices. When this letter was written Jefferson had not returned to America from his mission to France. Upon his arrival Jay recommended to him favorably “the young gentlemen in the office.” Jefferson formally entered upon the discharge of his duties on March 22, 1790.

When the seat of government was established in the District of Columbia in 1800 the archives and the seven employees of the Department of State were crowded into the Treasury Office, a building of 30 rooms, to the east of the White House. It was the only Government building sufficiently completed to receive them. John Marshall was then Secretary of State. On August 27, 1800, the Department of State was removed to one of the Seven Buildings on Pennsylvania Avenue and Nineteenth Street NW.

It has been interesting to determine positively the name of this historic group of buildings, because some confusion has arisen through there being in 1800 two groups or rows of houses, near to one another, one called the Six Buildings and the other the Seven Buildings. Christian Hines, in his Early Recollections of Washington City (1866), says, when giving a list of the few houses standing in the year 1800:

One square between Pennsylvania Avenue and K and Twenty-first and Twenty-second Streets, the Six Buildings, three stories high, owners and occupants not recollected * * *. One square bounded by Pennsylvania Avenue and I and Nineteenth and Twentieth Streets, 10 houses—one 3-story frame, occupied by a Mr. Middleton; one 2-Story frame, owned and occupied by William Waters, Esq., and the Seven Buildings, brick, 3 stories high.

Samuel C. Busey, in his Pictures of the City of Washington in the Past (1898), refers to and confirms Hines’s statements as to these two sets of buildings, and adds that in the Six Buildings was located O’Neal’s famous hotel. All writers apparently agree that the first home of the Department of State in Washington was in the house on the northwest corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and Nineteenth Street. This row of buildings—Nos. 1901-1913 Pennsylvania Avenue—is still standing, though it has undergone considerable change.

From the early part of 1820 to November, 1866, the Department of State was located at the corner of Fifteenth Street and Pennsylvania Avenue NW., in what was known as the Executive Building. The picture shown below was given to William McNeir, chief of the division of accounts of that department, by Thomas Ridgate, who found it in the attic of the old building. It will be noted from the picture, which shows the Treasury Department Building columns at the extreme left, that it was taken before the building was razed to make room for the north wing of the present Treasury Department Building; the rest of the new building had at that time been erected. Of this building Jonathan Eliot states, in his Historical Sketches of the Ten Mile Square, describing Washington in 1830:

At the distance of about 200 yards, on the east of the President’s house, are situated two buildings for the Department of State and of the Treasury; and at the same distance on the west are two others for the War and Navy Departments. These buildings are all of the same dimensions and construction; they are 160 feet long and 55 feet wide, of brick, two stories in height; they are divided in their length by a broad passage, with rooms on each side, and a spacious staircase in the center. The two most northerly buildings are ornamented with an Ionic portico of six columns and pediment. The grounds about these offices have been graduated and planted of late years, and the shrubbery begins to present a pleasing appearance.