From: Karyn-Siobhan.Robinson@DupontCircleANC.net |
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February 3, 2006THE BREWMASTER'S CASTLE NEEDS YOUR HELP
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German brewer Christian Heurich's mansion is the most
intact late- Victorian house museum in the country and has been open to
the public for 50 years, but it is now at risk of being sold and lost to
the public.
American University graduate students in history, historic preservation and related fields will assist area residents and other visitors on self-guided tours of the extraordinarily intact Gilded Age interior this Friday so that the public can see what it is at risk of losing. Heurich's widow left the 31-room mansion to what is now The Historical Society of Washington, DC in 1956, which maintained it as a house museum open to the public for 37 years. When the Society moved to the new City Museum in 2003 and was on the verge of selling it to a restaurateur who was going to convert it to a private club, a public foundation was formed to save it for the public. Interest cost on the money the foundation had to borrow to save the historic site have risen by over 50%, the foundation's reserves have been drained and it must raise $250,000 by February 15 to cure a default on payments or it will have to be sold or face foreclosure, and the public will lose what former Fine Arts Commission Secretary Charles Atherton called one of the most important local historic sites in the nation's capital. PLEASE HELP! OPEN HOUSE - FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 3 5:00pm-9:00pm - $5.00 per person reservations not required 1307 NEW HAMPSHIRE AVENUE, NW (20th & New Hampshire, one block west of Dupont Metro south, Red Line) www.brewmasterscastle.com |
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