How Wealthy Woman Is Trying to Evade Witch's Hoodoo

Washington, D.C., 1905

HOUSE WITHIN A HOUSE.

How a Wealthy Woman Will Evade Witch's Hoodoo.

Washington Star: A palace built literally around a superstition is Washington's newest marvel, and one may safely say that nothing to match it has ever been seen anywhere. Baronial castles, as well as edifices of other kinds, often gain resident spooks or acquire curses as incidents of their history, but it has not been the fashion hitherto to provide in the architect's plans against such troubles, and the notion of embodying a hoodoo killer in the very fabric of a mansion is wholly novel.

The owner of this remarkable house, which as yet is not quite half finished, is Mrs. R. H. Townsend of Philadelphia. Before her marriage she was Mary Scott, a daughter of the late Col. "Tom" Scott, of Pennsylvania railroad fame. Her wealth runs into the millions, and the mansion aforesaid will cost her about $400,000. It will be nearly twice the size of the famous Leiter house, on Dupont circle, being 125 feet in width and 123 feet in depth. Mrs. Townsend is building it, she says, for her youngest daughter, now 17 years of age, and almost ready to enter society. It will be the scene, doubtless, of some of the most gorgeous entertainments ever given at the national capital.

Now, once upon a time — a very proper way to begin such a story as this — Mrs. Townsend interviewed a witch. It was a remarkably clever witch, and, in revealing the future to her lady patron, she predicted a number of events since realized with astonishing accuracy in Mrs. Townsend's life. It was a very bright and cheerful picture she drew, on the whole one may command a good deal of brightness and cheerfulness if one possesses millions of dollars — but there was one unpleasant prognostication. This was that if Mrs. Townsend ever occupied a dwelling which had never been lived in before she would die within six months after moving in.

This prophecy struck Mrs. Townsend as grewsome, to say the least, and up to now she has carefully avoided all risk of incurring the penalty suggested. Though anxious for some time past to move her residence to Washington and build a home here, she has been restrained from the accomplishment of this desire by the witch's ominous vaticination. She had thought of buying a house, but could find none that was large enough or adequate in other respects for her purposes. At length, however, she hit upon an ingenious method of evading the hoodoo and getting what she wanted at the same time. She decided to purchase the old Hillyer mansion on Massachusetts avenue, and to construct a palace around it. This she is doing in such a manner that while occupying the new mansion, she will actually live in the old Hillyer house, the skeleton of which is retained as a middle portion of the revamped structure. Her bedroom, her dressingroom and bathroom and her boudoir will be in the ancient dwelling, the original floor joists and framework, as well as the roof, being kept intact.

Thus the hoodoo will be defeated, inasmuch as the construction on which the builders are now engaged comes under the head of "alterations," technically speaking, and Mrs. Townsend may consider herself safe against the fulfillment of the conditional threat recorded against her in the book of fate.

—Daily Iowa State Press, Iowa City, IA, Nov. 3, 1899, p. 2.