McMillan

This large room welcomes guests with a fireplace and bay window featuring a cozy sitting area and desk. In the front of the house on the second floor, the room features restful shades of sage green and gold, lovely antique furnishings including a firm queen size bed, floor to ceiling bookshelves, and a cozy sitting area in the bay window.

Behind the Name: James McMillan

McMillan Reservoir, located directly across the street, is part of a chain of public green spaces established in Senator James McMillan's 1901 plan for beautifying Washington. 

The McMillan Commission plans were implemented predominantly during the first three decades of the 20th century. For nearly 100 years, a legal height limit of 160' has preserved the broad, horizontal Baroque nature of the city, allowing light and air to reach the pedestrian level, and resulting in a picturesque skyline pierced by steeples, domes, towers and monuments.

As the city approached its centennial, there was a call to develop a comprehensive park system for the city. When the McMillan Commission was formed in 1901 to explore and plan the design of the city, the project then encompassed the historic core.

The forward-looking plans made by the McMillan Commission called for: re-landscaping the ceremonial core, consisting of the Capitol Grounds and Mall, including new extensions west and south of the Washington Monument; consolidating city railways and alleviating at-grade crossings; clearing slums; designing a coordinated municipal office complex in the triangle formed by Pennsylvanian Avenue, 15th Street, and the Mall, and establishing a comprehensive recreation and park system that would preserve the ring of Civil War fortifications around the city.

To protect the new goals introduced by the McMillan study, the AIA appealed to President Theodore Roosevelt to form a fine arts commission. The Mall we see today is the result of the McMillan Plan lined with museums and the Department of Agriculture.

Landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr, designed the original grounds of the site.  The Army Corps added the McMillan Park Reservoir and the Washington City Tunnel (10 meters in diameter and 4 miles long) between 1882 and 1902.  In 1905, a slow-sand water-filtration method was added at the McMillan Reservoir, and additional improvements were continually made.  Following the death of Senator McMillan in 1902, the grounds of the site were renamed McMillan Park.