Preserving History and a ‘Fantasy Feeling’

A JAPANESE pagoda sits perpendicular to a Swiss chalet, and they share a 32-acre historic campus with a Dutch windmill, a Spanish mission-style home, an American bungalow and an Italian villa. In all, there are 12 architecturally distinct homes placed randomly around the historic National Park Seminary in this city just outside Washington.

Nestled at the tip of Rock Creek Park, the bucolic if overgrown campus in the neighborhood of Forest Glen has been the victim of neglect and vandalism since the late 1970’s, when the Army all but abandoned the site as an annex to the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. This once elegant sanctuary, established in 1887, also narrowly escaped demolition.

After a grassroots effort lasting decades to wrest control from the Army and save the historic buildings from demise, the campus is now being transformed into a residential community by the Alexander Company of Madison, Wis., which specializes in salvaging historic structures. And here, that will be quite a job.