Eliza Scidmore Slept Here … and Here

In my research for a biography of Eliza Scidmore, I’ve tracked down various places where she stayed. She was quite a vagabond, so there were many. Some are pictured here (most are now demolished).

 

Atwood-Buck House, Madison, Wisconsin

Atwood-Buck House

On visits to see family in Madison, Wisconsin, Eliza Scidmore stayed at times with her cousins at the home of her uncle David Atwood, founding editor of the “Wisconsin State Journal” and a local VIP. (Source: Wisconsin State Historical Society)

 

Georgetown Visitation, Washington, D.C.

Georgetown Visitation

Eliza Scidmore got her early education at this Catholic convent school in Washington, which opened in 1799 and still operates today. (Source: Library of Congress)

 

Steamer “Idaho,” Juneau, Alaska, 1887

Steamer "Idaho" in Juneau, 1887

One her first trip to Alaska, in the summer of 1883, Eliza Scidmore traveled aboard the steamship “Idaho.” It’s shown here at dock in Juneau in 1887. (Source: Alaska State Library and Archives)

 

Club Hotel, Yokohama, Japan

Club Hotel Yokohama

Eliza Scidmore and her mother stayed at times at the Club Hotel in Yokohama when visiting Eliza’s brother George in the 1880s. (Source: International Research Center for Japanese Studies)

 

Brunswick Hotel, Boston

Brunswick Hotel Boston

This popular hotel in Boston’s Back Bay, where Eliza Scidmore and her mother vacationed at times, drew a fashionable clientele. (Source: Library of Congress)

 

Shoreham Hotel, Washington, D.C.

Old Shoreham Hotel

Eliza Scidmore stayed on and off at this Washington hotel, at H and 15th Streets, N.W., between long stretches of traveling. (Source: Streets of Washington website)

 

1837 M St., N.W., Washington, D.C.

D.C. House 1407 H St, N.W.

Eliza lived in this house after the turn of the century (view is from around the corner, on 19th Street). The American writer John Dos Passos later lived there. (Source: Library of Congress)

 

Stoneleigh Courts, Washington., D.C.

Stoneleigh Courts Washington

In the early 1920s Eliza Scidmore lived in this luxury apartment building at Connecticut Avenue and L Street, N.W., where her neighbors included many eminent people. (Source: Library of Congress)

 

Foreign General Cemetery, Yokohama

Eliza Scidmore gravesite

Eliza’s final place of rest is in a cemetery in Yokohama where her ashes were deposited at the gravesite of her mother and brother. They share a headstone, at lower left. (Photo: Diana Parsell)

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2 Comments

  1. EW on April 3, 2015 at 4:09 am

    The Stoneleigh Court apartment building in Washington, D. C. was actually located at Connecticut Avenue and L Street, NW, a block north of Farragut Square in downtown D.C. The apartments were taken down in the mid-1960s and replaced by a modernist structure in 1966, the Blake Building, which still stands today, taking the address of 1025 Connecticut Ave., NW. The trolleys pictured in the postcard are heading to and from Farragut Square.

    http://www.streetsofwashington.com/2010/06/elegant-stoneleigh-court-apartments.html?q=stoneleigh

    • Diana on April 3, 2015 at 1:47 pm

      Thanks for the correction! I found in another source, “Old Washington, D.C., in Early Photographs” (Robert Reed, Dover Publications, 1980), the same photo of Stoneleigh Courts, with address as Connecticut and K Streets. It seems clear from your info and the photo that it extended for whole block between K and L Streets, with the horseshoe center facing Connecticut Avenue. Pretty fashionable address, which tells me Eliza Scidmore was doing quite well as a travel writer at the time.

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