Who knows Adolph Cluss?

Adolph Cluss was an architect who designed about 90 buildings in Washington between 1850 and, say, 1890, of which only 7 remain.

One of the 7 is the Sumner School on 17th and M, NW, formerly a segregated school for African Americans. Another is the Franklin School at 14th and K, NW, which was for white children. He also designed Eastern Market, and the Smithsonian Arts and Industries Building. Virtually everything he designed was in red-brick, and looked like it would last forever. The demolition of all of these buildings show the changes that have taken place in Washington in a very dramatic fashion. Many school buildings, apartment buildings, government offices, markets and single family homes are gone.

He came here from Germany, a '48er, after the failure of the popular revolts there, at the age of 23, and lived here until 1905. In the 1880s, he went to work for the federal government as a building inspector at sites around the country.

In addition to his architecture, Cluss was very active in German-American affairs here and across the country (there were many German-Americans in the D.C. area, and a large number of them, Christian and Jewish, were financially successful and created a number of communal organizations), and also interested in left-wing (read: 19th century liberal/socialist) politics, having among other things an extensive correspondence with Karl Marx, whom he knew in Germany.

He is buried in Oak Hill Cemetery.

An exhibit (mainly posters, but well done) is now on display (through early January) at the Sumner School. It's free.

I was glad I went, as I had never heard his name before, and now know how central he was to post-Civil War DC architectural development.