Ponder this: Could these dark red bricks whisper tales of profound deliberations? We are standing before the Toutorsky Mansion. It is also known as the Brown-Toutorsky House. This five-story building has 18 rooms. The mansion stands at 1720 16th Street, NW in Washington, D.C. Since 2012, it has been home to the Embassy of the Republic of the Congo.
Completed in 1894, the 12000-square-foot Toutorsky Mansion was built for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Henry Billings Brown. Brown spent $65000 to build it. That would be around $2289000 today. He bought the land from the Riggs family in 1891 for $25000.
William Henry Miller designed the house. He was the first graduate of Cornell University’s School of Architecture. Miller modeled the exterior after 16th-century Flemish buildings. He designed the interior with Gothic, Elizabethan, Jacobean, and Colonial elements. The building’s exterior features intricate Ludowici tile. The interior boasts eight fireplaces. The main staircase features hand-carved griffins. According to the AIA Guide to the Architecture of Washington, D.C. it is a rare iteration of Renaissance Flemish architecture. The city’s architecture is overwhelmingly English and French.
The Toutorsky Mansion is a contributing property to the Sixteenth Street Historic District. It cannot be demolished or significantly altered. This requires permission from the city’s Historic Preservation Review Board.
The mansion provided shelter for important negotiations in the nation’s history. While living here, Justice Brown wrote the Plessy v. Ferguson decision. This decision justified segregation. Brown lived in the house until his death in 1913. That occurred in New York.
From 1924 to 1927, the Persian Legation rented the mansion. In 1942, the Zionist Organization of America bought the house. They pushed the U.S. government to recognize Israel in 1948. The group used the building as their headquarters through 1947. They moved some interior walls to create better office spaces.
Basil Peter Toutorsky purchased the house in 1947. Born in Russia in 1896, he was a hereditary nobleman. He studied law at Moscow University and music at the Moscow Conservatory of Music. He served in the Imperial Russian Navy during World War I. He survived the explosion of the Russian battleship Empress Maria in 1916. Then, he fought for the White Russians. They tried to overthrow the October Revolution. In 1920, he fled to Turkey. He arrived in the United States in 1923. With his wife, Maria Ignacia Howard Toutorsky, he opened the Toutorsky Academy of Music. They ran it for nearly four decades.
The furnishings included collections of dolls and swans. There were World War I medals and uniforms, stuffed wild animals, and Persian carpets. Also, heavy antique furniture and 21 pianos. One was a Bechstein concert grand on which Franz Liszt had played. Toutorsky had studied piano with Liszt himself.
In November 1988, the Toutorskys bequeathed the house to Johns Hopkins University’s Peabody Conservatory of Music. This was in exchange for an annuity and lifetime use of the mansion’s carriage house.
After Maria’s death in 1988 and Basil’s in 1989, the university rented rooms to students for $1 a month. This was to keep the house occupied. University officials sought $1.5 million for the house. They sold it in December 1990 for $808000. The proceeds endowed a piano studio and a scholarship fund named for Toutorsky.
Bruce Johnson bought the house. He owned a Dupont Circle firm that performed historic renovations. He added air-conditioning and bathrooms. The building received restoration for a 1992 fundraising event. It was called “National Symphony Orchestra Decorators’ Show House.”
In 2001, Humberto Gonzalez bought the property for $2.2 million. He sought to run it as a bed-and-breakfast inn and event venue. Nearby residents objected. The city granted him a license to offer only six rooms for rent. In 2008, Gonzalez sought to sell the mansion.
In February 2011, Gonzalez sold the house for $5.75 million to the Republic of the Congo. They moved their embassy to the property. In September, Congo paved the front yard with concrete. They removed three large trees. The U.S. State Department and the District of Columbia Department of Transportation ordered them to restore the yard. Congo complied on the deadline day.
Today, the Toutorsky Mansion stands as a reminder of its rich history. It is a testament to the people who lived and worked here. It is a beautiful landmark in Washington, D.C.