McPherson Square: A General and a Diamond

Map It:  McPherson Square 

SOMETIMES, the way we tease upcoming online content in Express' print edition works really well. In today's edition, you may have seen the photo of the statue in McPherson Square along with the question "What do you know about the namesake of McPherson Square?"

Well, somebody told us. We got a comment this morning from Barry Gay, who writes us from an Air Force e-mail account, who gave us some background on McPherson and the statue that was built in his honor by the Society of the Army of the Tennessee and unveiled in 1876:

Born in Clyde, Ohio, in 1828, James Birdseye McPherson left home at 13 to clerk in a store in nearby Green Springs. He attended the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, graduating first in his class, in 1853. When the Civil War began, McPherson served under General Ulysses S. Grant, who appointed him in 1863 to lead the Army of the Tennessee. Killed in an ambush in 1864 near Atlanta, Major-General McPherson was the highest-ranking Union officer killed in the Civil War. He is buried in Clyde, in the McPherson Cemetery, named for him.

The Express photograph shows the general on horseback, the horse is depicted incorrectly. A horse with one raised front leg indicates wounded in battle, two raised legs indicates killed in battle and with a horse on all fours indicates a general died of natural causes.

That's information we can't confirm immediately, but if that's the case, would the equestrian statue of Andrew Jackson in Lafayette Square — in which Jackson's horse has two raised legs — also be incorrect? Feel free to chime in your thoughts in comments.

So now we know about McPherson, but what about the square that bears his name? There's more to the story, including the curse of the Hope Diamond, after the jump.

Interestingly enough, McPherson Square — today more notable for its office buildings, its homeless population and its two Starbucks — was once one of the city's most desirable neighborhoods, with the blocks to the north of the White House lined with fashionable townhouses and mansions.

In fact, at one time, the entire south side of the square was occupied by the giant McLean House — a residence modeled on Rome's Barberini Palace that rivaled the White House in opulence. While the home was originally built in 1860, it was expanded multiple times, most notably in 1909 for John McLean, a millionaire who once owned The Washington Post.

According to "Capitol Losses," the urban villa's first floor, built with 30-foot ceilings, was designed only with entertaining in mind. And entertain the McLeans did.

John McLean's only son, Edward, inherited the family fortune — including The Post — and married Evalyn Walsh, whose father amassed a fortune mining out west. In her autobiography, "Father Struck It Rich," she details one 48-person McLean House dinner party, thrown for the Russian ambassador just before World War I, that cost $40,000 (and that figure's not adjusted for inflation). Evalyn owned the Hope Diamond, and it is said that the jewel's curse ruined the McLean-Walsh family and its fortune.

Edward, who died in a sanitarium in 1941, was tied to the 1923 Teapot Dome scandal and is better known for driving The Washington Post into the ground in the 1920s, and finally bankrupting the newspaper in the 1930s. Evalyn is known for squandering much of the family's $100 million fortune on travel and entertaining. Today, the family name lives on in McLean Gardens in Upper Northwest and McLean, Va.

Photo by Michael Grass/Express

Posted By Michael Grass at 1:07 PM on July 18, 2006 Tagged in Free Ride , McPherson Square , The District

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