DUPONT CIRCLE

In the 1880s, city maps called this spot Pacific Circle not because of any watery associations but because it was the city’s residential Far West. The area began to go “uptown” when William Morris Stewart, the mining millionaire Senator from Nevada, raised a turreted “castle” on the circle in 1875. In 1884, a portrait statue of Rear Admiral Samuel Francis duPont (1803–1865) was placed in this circle as well. This honor righted the wrong done when he was relieved of his command after failing to take Charleston by sea. Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles had insisted on the attack, believing that the new monitors (iron gunboats) were impregnable. DuPont’s forces were turned back by an enormous volume of shot from Forts Sumter and Moultrie.

In time, Dupont Circle was ringed with some of the city’s most substantial residences, lavishly equipped to vie with each other in dispensing hospitality through the Washington “season” that ran from the Supreme Court’s October opening until Lent. These in-town chateaux and palazzi rose on comparatively small wedges of land, though there might be space outside for a dog run or a “terrapin moat” in which would sulk the wherewithal for such delicacies as “Lady Curzon Soup.” Daughters of the neighborhood were among the “dollar princesses” who married titled Europeans.

Different hostesses had different nights to give their weekly “germans,” a dancing evening characterized by party favors distributed after each dance set. When the season ended, you could go abroad in search of more beads, fans, parasols, and combs to give away at next year’s parties.

Admiral duPont’s family took him home to Wilmington, where his statue stands in Rockford Park; they commissioned Daniel Chester French to design the fountain installed in 1921. Henry Bacon was the architect. The large white marble works harmoniously with the width of the circle. Its clas-sical style is particularly appropriate to the house Stamford White designed for the Robert Wilson Pattersons at 15 Dupont Circle.

The fountain’s wide, graceful basin catches the upper bowl’s overflow. The stem is a wide column of three allegorical figures in graceful classical drape. Their symbols suggest the arts of ocean navigation. A woman who holds a boat in one hand, stroking a gull with the other, symbolizes the sea. The stars are represented by a female figure holding a globe. The wind is the male figure Mr. Wentzel photographed in 1936, draped in the wind-filled sail of a ship, holding a conch shell horn.

The two women–one male ratio somehow suggests Dupont Circle’s goings on during the high stepping era between the Wars: the men were somewhat less noticed than the ladies, who gave every evidence of relishing the social ramble.

PHOTOGRAPH BY VOLKMAR K. WENTZEL (CC ‘74); TEXT BY JUDITH W. FRANK (WASHINGTON BY NIGHT)

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