The Frances Perkins House is a historic house at 2326 California Street NW in
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from Virginia, and shares land borders with ...
Built in 1914, it was from 1937 to 1940 the home of
Frances Perkins
Frances Perkins (born Fannie Coralie Perkins; April 10, 1880 – May 14, 1965) was an American workers-rights advocate who served as the fourth United States Secretary of Labor from 1933 to 1945, the longest serving in that position. A member o ...
(1880-1965), the first woman to serve in the
United States Cabinet
The Cabinet of the United States is the principal official advisory body to the president of the United States. The Cabinet generally meets with the president in Cabinet Room (White House), a room adjacent to the Oval Office in the West Wing of ...
. Perkins was the
Secretary of Labor under president
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (January 30, 1882April 12, 1945), also known as FDR, was the 32nd president of the United States, serving from 1933 until his death in 1945. He is the longest-serving U.S. president, and the only one to have served ...
, and was a major force in advancing his New Deal agenda. This house was declared a
National Historic Landmark
A National Historic Landmark (NHL) is a National Register of Historic Places property types, building, district, object, site, or structure that is officially recognized by the Federal government of the United States, United States government f ...
in 1991.
[ and ]
Description and history
The Frances Perkins House is located in Washington's Sheridan-Kalorama neighborhood, on the south side of California Street roughly midway between 23rd and 24th Streets. It is the right hand side of two identical brick townhouses, which were originally built as mirror images of each other. They are three bays wide, with entrance in the outer bays, with segmented-arch transom windows and shallow pedimented porticos with engaged Ionic columns. Second-floor windows are set in rounded-arch openings, while the mansarded third floor has dormers with gabled and segmented-arch pediments. The interior of the Perkins House retains high quality woodwork, particularly in the main parlor.
The house was built in 1914, and was from 1937 to 1940 home to Frances Perkins. She served as Roosevelt's Labor Secretary from 1933 until 1945, the only one of his cabinet appointees to serve through all of his terms. Prior to this high-profile role, she had been active in improving working conditions and pay for the working classes, and as Secretary of Labor, she was instrumental in pushing for many elements of the New Deal. In addition to temporary measures such as the
Public Works Administration
The Public Works Administration (PWA), part of the New Deal of 1933, was a large-scale public works construction agency in the United States headed by United States Secretary of the Interior, Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes. It was ...
and the
Civilian Conservation Corps
The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was a voluntary government unemployment, work relief program that ran from 1933 to 1942 in the United States for unemployed, unmarried men ages 18–25 and eventually expanded to ages 17–28. The CCC was ...
, she also helped draft legislation creating
Social Security
Welfare spending is a type of government support intended to ensure that members of a society can meet basic human needs such as food and shelter. Social security may either be synonymous with welfare, or refer specifically to social insurance ...
. Of the residences she occupied while in the post, this is one she lived in the longest.
See also
*
Francis Perkins National Monument,
Perkins Homestead, her family home in Maine, a National Monument
*
List of National Historic Landmarks in Washington, D.C.
*
References
External links
*
{{National Register of Historic Places
National Historic Landmarks in Washington, D.C.
Houses in Washington, D.C.
Colonial Revival architecture in Washington, D.C.
Houses completed in 1914