Ashburton House

Standing directly across Lafayette Park from the White House, this ornate parish house for St. John’s Episcopal Church was once the venue for negotiations leading to the end of the Aroostook War.

Originally built in 1836 by Matthew St. Clair Clark, the house was quickly sold to Joseph Gales, former Mayor of D.C. and publisher of the National Intelligencer

Lord Ashburton didn’t make the scene until 1842. Though not its first resident, the house is named after him - Alexander Baring, 1st Baron Ashburton. Along with then-Secretary of State Daniel Webster, he negotiated the Webster-Ashburton Treaty, which resolved several border disputes between the U.S. and British North American colonies that would later become parts of Canada.

Novelist Edward Bulwer-Lytton was the next resident of Ashburton House. He was known for such colorful phrases as “the pen is mightier than the sword,” “the great unwashed,” “pursuit of the almighty dollar,” and the classic opening line “it was a dark and stormy night.” This latter opening salvo inspired a contest that is now in its 40th year - the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, which seeks to find the opening sentence of the worst of all possible novels.

St. John’s Episcopal Church acquired the building in 1953 and repurposed it as a parish hall for the adjoining church.

On June 1, 2020, an act of arson was committed in the basement of the building as part of a protest connected to the murder of George Floyd. Fortunately damages were minimal and well contained.