Thomas Nelson Page was a lawyer and the author of the story collection In Ole Virginia, published in 1887, among other books. Page served as U.S. Ambassador to Italy from 1913 to 1919. He moved into this mansion designed by Stanford White in 1893.
Page popularized the Reconstruction-era “plantation tradition” in fiction, a racist, idealized version of life in the South before the Civil War, featuring beloved masters and contented slaves. He published over twenty books of fiction and nonfiction, including Befo’ de War (1888), The Old South (1892), The Burial of the Guns (1894), Bred in the Bone (1904), two biographies of Robert E. Lee, and two books of biased social history, The Negro: The Southerner’s Problem (1904), and The Old Dominion: Her Making and Her Manners (1908).
The Homes
1759 R St. NW, Washington, DC
This grand Colonial Revival house has an unusual trapezoidal floor plan. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1975. Now the Wyss Foundation.
Thomas Nelson Page
1759 R St. NW, Washington DC
Located in Dupont Circle neighborhood, Northwest - East of Rock Creek