Benjamin Ogle Tayloe House - Washington, D.C.

The Benjamin Ogle Tayloe house is located on Madison Place in Washington, D.C.  It was the home of the noted businessman and diplomat from 1829 to 1868.  The 3-story Federal Style house was completed in 1828 and Tayloe and his wife Julia moved here in November of 1829.  The home became a frequented spot for the important people in Washington.  It has been reported that Presidents William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, Martin Van Buren, John Quincy Adams, and Millard Fillmore were all guests at one time of the Tayloes.  An early incident of notoriety occurred on Februaryy 27, 1859 when Philip Barton Key II, son of Francis Scott Key, was shot and mortally wounded in Lafayette Square by Daniel Sickles.  Key had been carrying on an affair with Sickles' wife, Teresa, and had been spotted by Sickles in the park.  The enraged husband ran into Lafayette Square and shot Key three times with his pistol.  The dying man was taken into the Tayloe house and died shortly thereafter.  In 1868 Tayloe died and left the home to his second wife, Phoebe.  In the years after Phoebe's death in 1881 the residents included Senator Don Cameron, Vice President Garret Hobart, and Senator Mark Hanna, whose frequent breakfast meetings here with Presidents William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt, and other important politicians, gave the home the nickname the "Little White House."  From 1917 to 1952 the home, along with the Dolley Madison House, was used as the headquarters of the Cosmos Club, a gentlemen's social club.  After the club's departure the federal government bought the structure and in the late 1950's it became the offices of NASA.  In 1960 it was saved from demolition, along with other historic buildings in the neighborhood, by the Kennedy administration.  It is now part of the Lafayette Square National Historic Landmark District.

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