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Most Endangered Places
2004

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Most Endangered Places for 2004

TREGARON ESTATE

3100 MACOMB STREET, NW

STEWARD: TREGARON LIMITED PARTNERSHIP
DC INVENTORY OF HISTORIC PLACES (1979),
NATIONAL REGISTER LANDMARK (1990)
CONTRIBUTING RESOURCE WITHIN THE CLEVELAND PARK
HISTORIC DISTRICT (1986)

Built in 1912 by architect Charles Adam Platt for owner James Parmalee, Tregaron is a twenty-one acre site consisting of open fields and woodlands with meandering streams. At that time most of this segment of northwest Washington was occupied by farms, summer homes, and isolated suburban villas. Charles Adam Platt was the era’s foremost architect and landscape architect of country houses in America. Ellen Biddle Shipman, an apprentice in Platt’s office, collaborated with Platt on Tregaron Estate. Shipman is widely recognized for her contributions to the field of landscape architecture, particularly as a horticulturalist. Tregaron was the second collaboration between Shipman and Platt. Platt planned the circulation pattern for the site along with the formal gardens and Shipman completed the plans in 1914. In 1927 she was hired again to design a wild garden for the Causeway. The landscape includes hardscape features such as stone bridges, retaining walls, and the causeway along with a formal garden, a pond, bridle path, and a brook. In 1980, Tregaron Development Corporation and the Washington International School purchased the site. The school owns 6 acres in the northwest portion of the site that includes all of the landmark’s historic structures. The remaining 14 acres owned by the partnership includes many of the site’s landscape features. The landscape has been allowed to deteriorate and Shipman’s design is barely recognizable. Development has threatened the green space of the estate a number of times. Most recently, the owners of the 14 developed acres have sought permits to begin construction of 16 new houses and to carve a new road through the sloping, grassy meadow, drastically altering the appearance of the site.

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