The Warder-Totten Mansion was built on 15th and K Streets by famed architect H.H. Richardson in 1886 in a Romanesque style. Originally the home of Benjamin Warder, the owner of the company that later became International Harvester, the house quickly fell into a state of neglect once the Warder family left the building.

Nearly ruined by neglect and almost demolished, architect George Totten bought and saved the building by moving it to its current location on 16th Street just north of Meridian Hill Park. It is said that in the 1920s, Totten painstakingly moved each stone, piece by piece in his Model T Ford, to its current location. Totten reconstructed the building with almost all of the original materials, using all of the exterior stonework (save the main doorway) and much of the interior woodwork.

Yet despite Totten’s preservation efforts, the house was privately owned and vacant for many years. The mansion was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1972.The building had been reduced to a shell of its former self, and was placed on the D.C. Preservation League’s Most Endangered Places List on 1996.

In 2001, the mansion was renovated and has split into 38 apartments. Now, if you so desire you can live in the H.H. Richardson designed mansion with its mahogany interiors, marble arches, and imported Japanese Tea Room.