Brentwood

Brentwood is a neighborhood in Northeast Washington, D.C. and is named after the Brentwood Mansion built at Florida Avenue and 6th Street NE in 1817 by Robert Brent, the first mayor of Washington City. He built it as a wedding present for his daughter Eleanor on her marriage as second wife to Congressman Joseph Pearson, and it stood for a hundred years before burning down in 1917.

The mansion stood on a large expanse of land, a farm owned by Mayor Brent, that also went to Eleanor. Congressman Pearson also purchased additional properties and expanded the estate further. The property then known as Brentwood was larger than the present neighborhood known as Brentwood. Images of the mansion may be found in the book Capital Losses: A Cultural History of Washington's Destroyed Buildings by James W. Goode, and in several books in the collection of the Historical Society of Washington, D.C. A descendant of the family that owned the mansion throughout its existence has posted a collection of paintings, drawings, photos, and histories of the mansion on-line in an "album" titled "Worthington House and Brentwood Mansion" on a Mac Web Gallery site. The Frick Art Reference Library has drawings, paintings, and perhaps photographs . On the Web, a small drawing of the mansion, together with a brief description of its owners in 1873, Capt. and Mrs. Carlile Pollock Patterson, may be found in "Washington Outside and Inside" by George Alfred Townsend, at page 620, searchable as a Google book.

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