That's exactly what you'll see if you frequently come upon Massachusetts Avenue and 20th Street NW. Otherwise, the word "Kossuth," which we read somewhere was pronounced "co-shoot," might not be a familiar one. The word refers to Lajos Kossuth, one of several Eastern European champions of liberty and democracy celebrated within a few city blocks northwest of Dupont Circle, and arguably the most quarrelsome and conflicted of them all.

It also refers to the Kossuth House, a handsome if squat stone building at 2001 Massachusetts Ave. across the street from Riggs National PNC Bank. The building is home to a Hungarian-American community center and plays host to lectures, art exhibits and movies. If this sounds like a project of the Hungarian Embassy, you would be wrong (though it does seem plausible). The building is owned by the Hungarian Reformed Federation of America, a non-profit life insurance group.

The DCist Monument feature stays away from buildings -- we leave that to the DCist Architecture posts -- but in this case, the Kossuth House's external eastern wall (along 20th) features two plaques that serve as a reminder of Kossuth's arguments, adventures, and North American tour 1851-52.

Born in 1802 to a family of minor aristocratic standing, Kossuth was at age 19 appointed representative for an Austrian county in what is now Hungary. The job ended unceremoniously. As Wikipedia puts it, Kossuth was "dismissed on the grounds of using estate funds to pay a gambling debt."

But you couldn't keep young Kossuth down. Soon after he went to work in the Hungarian national Diet, an unfree legislature in which the Habsburgs/Hapsburgs allowed the top Hungarian nobility to vote, up to a point. Hungarian nationalists, among whom Kossuth was counted, were getting sick and tired of the post-Metternich stooges keeping them down. The good news for young Kossuth is that his letters on Hungarian affairs were widely-read through informal channels; the Austrians forbade an independent press. Had the Internet existed back then, his dispatches might have been frequenlty noted on the contemporary version of Instapundit.com.

The bad news is that it got him thrown in prison. His health took a hit, but it afforded him the chance to learn English real good (joke) and enjoy tolerably infrequent visits from his wife-to-be, Teresa Meszleny. (The interests of gossip require us to note that, given available evidence, we cannot rule out the possibility that these were conjugal visits.)

Once out of prison, Kossuth was appointed by the powers-that-were to yet another office, this time one where personal propriety is a bit less important -- journalism. Kossuth's newspaper, Pesti Hirlap, was an instant hit. Typically enough of geniuses recognized in their time, his popularity partly explains his dismissal after just three years.

On the surface, it was a disagreement over money -- like when sitcom actors threaten to walk off the set unless they get seven figures per episode and their own production company. In Kossuth's case, the real cause is said to have related to his government-thwarted ambitions to start a new paper. And when the negotiations were exhausted, he walked.

Here was another of Kossuth's many exiles and disgraces. Each time, he took some time off and rebounded in one way or another. This time he ran for a seat in the newly re-constituted Diet, and he won. Like many of his multiple occupations, Kossuth's legislative tenure proved brief, however expectation-busting. At the very least, his political engagements were eventful.

1848 was a time of turmoil for the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Kossuth lobbied for Hungarian autonomy, successfully positioned himself as the go-to guy in the situation, and soon enough consolidated control as leader of the Hugarian counties (comparisons to Senator-cum-Emperor Palpatine are acknowledged by DCist, but not endorsed). Thanks to Lajos Kossuth's writing, oration and essentially his powers of persuasion, he won over the guys that calleded the shots. Before long he was (again in Wikipedia's terminology) a "virtual dictator."

At one point, his name was on the money.

But he was less Saddam Hussein than Sultan of Brunei (though we brook no rumors about orgies) and certainly no 19th century Risk champion. If you think about it, we never did hear about the Hungaro-Austrian Empire, or the Kossuth Age, or even the Daily Kossuth. To begin with, his own inability to work well with Hungarian military leader Artúr Görgey (Wikipedia again!) hurt him a lot. Soon enough a transfer of power back in Vienna cost Kossuth that dictator gig, and he was forced again into a more-permanent exile -- escaping first to Turkey, moving on to France, England, and eventually that fledgling coalition of colonies in the New World. At this time, he wasn't yet fifty years old, and he still had forty years more to travel the world as something like a non-celibate Dalai Lama.

During his time in the antebellum United States, he spent eight months (between December 1851 and July 1852) traveling the contiguous 43, where he was received both like a post-Toqueville rock star and a democracy diva (to propose a few lame, partially anachronistic constructions). Kossuth became the second foreigner to address the House of Representatives, following the Marquis de Lafayette. He stayed in the White House as a guest of Millard Fillmore (whom we believe has no outdoor memorial of his own in the District proper). He also paid a visit to Iowa, drawing massive crowds by Iowa standards. He left such an impression in the five-year-old state that to this day the Hawkeyes still have a Kossuth County (how fitting) which also happens to be, according to its curiously tallish shape in the state's gridlike county-division regime, the state's largest.

Of course he is still well-remembered in the Hungarian-American community, hence the Kossuth House. But that is not the only memorial to Kossuth in the District, either; there is an assumedly bronze representation of him in the crypt beneath the Capitol Rotunda, arranged for in 2002 by Rep. Tom Lantos, a native of Hungary and Holocaust survivor.

Yet the set of plaques devoted to Kossuth just off Embassy Row are where he is still the most visible, even if that isn't saying much. The bronze plaque honoring Kossuth is a bit worn by the elements and, arguably worse, shares its wallspace with a plaque devoted to Theodore Roosevelt (who has a whole island to himself here). Most passersby probably look past the peculiar visage of the man with the strange name to the much more familiar profile of Theodore Rex, whose presence on this spot owes to his having once signed an amicable recognition of the later Hungarian state.

Before these plaques, a faded white sign in front of the Kossuth House plaques quotes a possibly-harried Lajos Kossuth (seems like he was in demand) telling the Ohio legislature on Feb. 6, 1852: "All for the people and all by the people, nothing about the people without the people, that is democracy."

We're not quite sure what this means, but it does sound like an early version of Abraham Lincoln's superior formulation: "[O]f the people, by the people, for the people." Perhaps that Illinois jurist read the Kossuth edition of his daily paper. Along the lines of political encomiums, the Kossuth plaque notes that the name "Lajos," translated to English (or French at any rate) is "Louis." In fact, it lists his name and accomplishments as:

He was that. He was a gambler who knew when to fold 'em, and he was plenty more, too. Rest in peace, you glorious bastard.