Mountjoy Bayly House

Built for the second Sergeant at Arms of the U.S. Senate, General Mountjoy Bayly, this august, Federal-style brick edifice has gone by many names and has been home to manifold progressive causes in the years since its construction in the early 19th Century.

Perhaps the most prominent resident at this considerable Capitol Hill château was its third owner, former California Governor, founder of the Progressive Party, and long-term U.S. Senator, Hiram W. Johnson. He purchased the house in 1929 after it had briefly been home to members of the Anabaptist sect known as the Schwarzenau Brethren. Johnson had run as Vice President on a ticket with Theodore Roosevelt some years earlier but they ended up losing to Woodrow Wilson in the general election. He lived there until 1947.

The building has also been known as Chaplains Memorial Building and Parkington, and has been home to many other organizations, including the Fund for Peace, the Center for Defense Information, In The Public Interest, the Center for International Policy, the Center for National Security Studies, the Women’s Campaign Fund, the Campaign Against Nuclear War, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, Pax Americas, the Military Families Support Network, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.