Smithsonian to Auction Artifacts from H.H. Richardson House

The 19th-century Boston architect Henry Hobson Richardson's only major surviving work in Washington, D.C., a turreted 1888 townhouse designed for the farm machinery tycoon Benjamin H. Warder, has survived numerous demolition threats. Now chunks of it are coming on the market.

In the 1920s, the building was dismantled and moved from its original spot on K Street to 16th Street, and the Smithsonian acquired an arched doorway and a leafy carved fireplace. It displayed them until around 1960, and on November 10 and 11, they will be offered with five-figure estimates each in an auction at Sloans and Kenyon in Chevy Chase, Maryland.

“The museum has no viable method to display them in the current galleries” and is no longer collecting such architectural elements, Mandy Young, a spokesperson for the Smithsonian American Art Museum, wrote in a recent email. The doorway alone, she noted, weighs 31 tons.

Prospective buyers can examine the pieces at the museum's Maryland warehouse, and successful bidders would have to pay the moving costs, Stephanie Kenyon, the auction house's owner, said in a recent phone interview.

The Smithsonian's enthusiastic 1920s reports on the acquisitions described their materials as Berea grit sandstone, Numidian marble and white holly carved by “skilled workmen, assisted by students from Richardson's Boston office.”

The Warder house fell derelict in the 1990s and is now divided into three dozen rental apartments.