James Goode, historian of Washington statues and architecture, dies at 80
Bart Barnes
WASHINGTON POST Jan. 7, 2020 at 4:24 p.m. CST
James Moore Goode, a Smithsonian Institution historian and author who wrote books about the statues and architecture of Washington, specializing in the out-of-the-way, the lesser-known, the trivial, the no-longer extant and the never-heard-of, died Dec. 12 at a hospital in the District. He was 80.
The cause was congestive heart failure, said a friend and former Smithsonian colleague, Amy Ballard.
From Dr. Goode's books, a reader could learn that the statuary trove of the national capital includes not only monuments to presidents and statesmen like Washington and Lincoln but also the details about replicas of at least 73 animals, catalogued alphabetically from alligators to woodchucks. There is a bronze sculpture of a gray wolf outside the Washington headquarters of the conservation group Defenders of Wildlife.
Because Washington is a world capital, it's predictable that Mexico would have a statue here of Emiliano Zapata, the hero of the Mexican revolution. It's understandable that Polish pianist, patriot and statesman Ignacy Jan Paderewski would get a statue from his native Poland, even though he died in New York.
But who has heard of John Howard Payne?
Dr. Goode found a large statue to Payne next to his grave in Georgetown's Oak Hill Cemetery. He was an American actor, writer and diplomat who, according to a 2009 Washington Post column by John Kelly, is better known as the lyricist in 1822 of "Home! Sweet Home!" The song includes the line, "Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home."
Also at Oak Hill is John A. Joyce, an Irish immigrant and Civil War colonel from a Kentucky regiment. According to Dr. Goode, Joyce commissioned a statue of himself several years before he died. Joyce claimed authorship of a poem published in 1885 that included the familiar lines "Laugh and the world laughs with you/ Weep and you weep alone."
But soon after the poem was published, a young Wisconsin woman, Ella Wheeler, charged plagiarism, citing publication in the New York Sun newspaper in 1883 of a poem containing similar lines that she had written and for which she had been paid $5.
"Joyce refused to acknowledge that she was the real author," Dr. Goode wrote in 2009. "He even had the two lines carved on his tombstone shortly before he died."
From years of walking tours of the city and suburbs came much of Dr. Goode's material, not only on statues but also books about elegant architecture, torn down in the name of progress ("Capital Losses," 2003); and the finest and most highly posh of the city's apartments ("Best Addresses," 1988).
Among the best of those remaining is the McCormick at 1785 Massachusetts Avenue. Banker and former treasury secretary Andrew Mellon once occupied a 25-room, 11,000-square-foot penthouse apartment in the Beaux Arts building, which was built in 1915 and is also known as the Andrew Mellon Building.
Leading walking tours about the city, "I kept seeing buildings come down, and invariably something worse went up," Dr. Goode told The Post in 2003. Over nine years he compiled a block-by-block survey of 252 buildings that had been demolished, including the historic Rhodes Tavern, which was torn down in 1984, and the Valley View mansion on Foxhall Road, one of Washington's last and largest grand estates and which was torn down in final years of the last century.
James Moore Goode was born Sept. 17, 1939, in Statesville, N.C., where his father was a corporate treasurer. He graduated from the University of South Carolina in 1964 and received a master's degree from the University of Virginia in 1966.
He was a portly man who relished dining at restaurants rated with multiple stars, but also had his favorite neighborhood taverns, comfortable but undistinguished. His dress was correct and conservative, often wearing suspenders and usually a hat when he went outside. He collected silver, portraits and stamps.
Habitually he answered the telephone with the word "Ahoy," which he liked to point out was the original telephone salutation suggested by Alexander Graham Bell. It was later supplanted by Thomas Edison's suggestion, "Hello."
He came to the Washington area in 1966 as a teacher of American history at George Mason University, then from 1968 to 1970 was a reference librarian at the Library of Congress. From 1970 to 1987, he was a Smithsonian Institution staffer who organized exhibits and lectures, gave walking tours and wrote books. He resigned in 1988 to work on a doctoral degree in American studies, which he received from George Washington University in 1995.
In 2015 he received the second annual Visionary Historian Award from the Historical Society of Washington D.C. for a "lifetime body of work [which] represents the highest achievement in the study of Washington, D.C."
Kelly wrote in his 2009 story on Dr. Goode, published a year after his 1974 book "Washington Sculpture" was reissued: "Statues tell stories, especially in Washington, a statue-rich town. Whom we decide to commemorate, and how, reveals something about us as a society. And what you can't tell from looking at the sculpture, Goode reveals in his book."
----------------------------------------
I met James in 1972. I'd just left the left the Army and had six months to fill before I hoped to fill before I hoped beginning graduate work in architectural history at the University of Virginia. James at age 32 was curator of the Smithsonian castle. Working as an unpaid assistant I correctly thought would help with admissions far more than selling sweaters in a department store in that time slot. It did, but I hadn't expected an almost 50-year friendship as the greatest payment.
Working for James was a great pleasure. He was very knowledgable on so many topics, and shared his insights enthusiastically. The Castle was and is an extraordinary building, and James was Vestal of the Temple. He had long since decided that second tier antiques would be the same cost as good modern office furniture, so if a chair or desk were needed, we'd often drive to Philadelphia to shop, and he could explain why the curve of the leg made one table far better than another seemingly identical piece. I was also a research assistant on his first book, The Outdoor Sculpture of Washington DC, and he made poking around musty archives quite pleasurable. He provided a scholarly overview, but also had a great knack for unearthing relevant 19th century gossip and terrific historic photos. I also found working at the Smithsonian a revelation, with a large Andrew Wyeth painting in my office or seeing the vast warehouses in Maryland varied collections of, say, tall case clocks in a quantity reminiscent of closing scenes of "Indiana Jones."
James was a great collector himself. When we met, he'd moved from English furniture to very fine American Empire pieces, then only beginning to be appreciated. He continued in cycles - mezzotints, rare architectural books, teapots, self-portraits of living artists (including several nudes!) and bookplates. The latter collection began when a colleague gave him one of Hitler's bookplates taken from his final bunker, and James had hundreds more of great beauty or owned by persons of transcendent importance. I was honored that James continued to pick my brain on various bookplate owners and sent several manuscripts for comment. Invariably he then sent signed copies of his books.
A confirmed bachelor, James lived in a series of fine old apartments in Washington (and, for a time an historic house in Newcastle, Delaware). These always beautifully showcased his collections du jour. A favorite was the art deco Kennedy-Warren, backing on to the National Zoo; in the spring, with windows open, unlikely jungle animal sounds were heard.
I lived in Austin for most of this time, but visited Washington annually and greatly enjoyed picking up a telephone to hear him say, "Ahoy." He was the best of companions, knowledgable, funny and engaging. He is greatly missed by many.
The year before his death, James achieved a goal of many years, becoming an Hereditary Member of the Maryland Society of the Cincinnati.
Peter Flagg Maxson, Duxbury, Mass. 7 October 2020
Bart Barnes
WASHINGTON POST Jan. 7, 2020 at 4:24 p.m. CST
James Moore Goode, a Smithsonian Institution historian and author who wrote books about the statues and architecture of Washington, specializing in the out-of-the-way, the lesser-known, the trivial, the no-longer extant and the never-heard-of, died Dec. 12 at a hospital in the District. He was 80.
The cause was congestive heart failure, said a friend and former Smithsonian colleague, Amy Ballard.
From Dr. Goode's books, a reader could learn that the statuary trove of the national capital includes not only monuments to presidents and statesmen like Washington and Lincoln but also the details about replicas of at least 73 animals, catalogued alphabetically from alligators to woodchucks. There is a bronze sculpture of a gray wolf outside the Washington headquarters of the conservation group Defenders of Wildlife.
Because Washington is a world capital, it's predictable that Mexico would have a statue here of Emiliano Zapata, the hero of the Mexican revolution. It's understandable that Polish pianist, patriot and statesman Ignacy Jan Paderewski would get a statue from his native Poland, even though he died in New York.
But who has heard of John Howard Payne?
Dr. Goode found a large statue to Payne next to his grave in Georgetown's Oak Hill Cemetery. He was an American actor, writer and diplomat who, according to a 2009 Washington Post column by John Kelly, is better known as the lyricist in 1822 of "Home! Sweet Home!" The song includes the line, "Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home."
Also at Oak Hill is John A. Joyce, an Irish immigrant and Civil War colonel from a Kentucky regiment. According to Dr. Goode, Joyce commissioned a statue of himself several years before he died. Joyce claimed authorship of a poem published in 1885 that included the familiar lines "Laugh and the world laughs with you/ Weep and you weep alone."
But soon after the poem was published, a young Wisconsin woman, Ella Wheeler, charged plagiarism, citing publication in the New York Sun newspaper in 1883 of a poem containing similar lines that she had written and for which she had been paid $5.
"Joyce refused to acknowledge that she was the real author," Dr. Goode wrote in 2009. "He even had the two lines carved on his tombstone shortly before he died."
From years of walking tours of the city and suburbs came much of Dr. Goode's material, not only on statues but also books about elegant architecture, torn down in the name of progress ("Capital Losses," 2003); and the finest and most highly posh of the city's apartments ("Best Addresses," 1988).
Among the best of those remaining is the McCormick at 1785 Massachusetts Avenue. Banker and former treasury secretary Andrew Mellon once occupied a 25-room, 11,000-square-foot penthouse apartment in the Beaux Arts building, which was built in 1915 and is also known as the Andrew Mellon Building.
Leading walking tours about the city, "I kept seeing buildings come down, and invariably something worse went up," Dr. Goode told The Post in 2003. Over nine years he compiled a block-by-block survey of 252 buildings that had been demolished, including the historic Rhodes Tavern, which was torn down in 1984, and the Valley View mansion on Foxhall Road, one of Washington's last and largest grand estates and which was torn down in final years of the last century.
James Moore Goode was born Sept. 17, 1939, in Statesville, N.C., where his father was a corporate treasurer. He graduated from the University of South Carolina in 1964 and received a master's degree from the University of Virginia in 1966.
He was a portly man who relished dining at restaurants rated with multiple stars, but also had his favorite neighborhood taverns, comfortable but undistinguished. His dress was correct and conservative, often wearing suspenders and usually a hat when he went outside. He collected silver, portraits and stamps.
Habitually he answered the telephone with the word "Ahoy," which he liked to point out was the original telephone salutation suggested by Alexander Graham Bell. It was later supplanted by Thomas Edison's suggestion, "Hello."
He came to the Washington area in 1966 as a teacher of American history at George Mason University, then from 1968 to 1970 was a reference librarian at the Library of Congress. From 1970 to 1987, he was a Smithsonian Institution staffer who organized exhibits and lectures, gave walking tours and wrote books. He resigned in 1988 to work on a doctoral degree in American studies, which he received from George Washington University in 1995.
In 2015 he received the second annual Visionary Historian Award from the Historical Society of Washington D.C. for a "lifetime body of work [which] represents the highest achievement in the study of Washington, D.C."
Kelly wrote in his 2009 story on Dr. Goode, published a year after his 1974 book "Washington Sculpture" was reissued: "Statues tell stories, especially in Washington, a statue-rich town. Whom we decide to commemorate, and how, reveals something about us as a society. And what you can't tell from looking at the sculpture, Goode reveals in his book."
----------------------------------------
I met James in 1972. I'd just left the left the Army and had six months to fill before I hoped to fill before I hoped beginning graduate work in architectural history at the University of Virginia. James at age 32 was curator of the Smithsonian castle. Working as an unpaid assistant I correctly thought would help with admissions far more than selling sweaters in a department store in that time slot. It did, but I hadn't expected an almost 50-year friendship as the greatest payment.
Working for James was a great pleasure. He was very knowledgable on so many topics, and shared his insights enthusiastically. The Castle was and is an extraordinary building, and James was Vestal of the Temple. He had long since decided that second tier antiques would be the same cost as good modern office furniture, so if a chair or desk were needed, we'd often drive to Philadelphia to shop, and he could explain why the curve of the leg made one table far better than another seemingly identical piece. I was also a research assistant on his first book, The Outdoor Sculpture of Washington DC, and he made poking around musty archives quite pleasurable. He provided a scholarly overview, but also had a great knack for unearthing relevant 19th century gossip and terrific historic photos. I also found working at the Smithsonian a revelation, with a large Andrew Wyeth painting in my office or seeing the vast warehouses in Maryland varied collections of, say, tall case clocks in a quantity reminiscent of closing scenes of "Indiana Jones."
James was a great collector himself. When we met, he'd moved from English furniture to very fine American Empire pieces, then only beginning to be appreciated. He continued in cycles - mezzotints, rare architectural books, teapots, self-portraits of living artists (including several nudes!) and bookplates. The latter collection began when a colleague gave him one of Hitler's bookplates taken from his final bunker, and James had hundreds more of great beauty or owned by persons of transcendent importance. I was honored that James continued to pick my brain on various bookplate owners and sent several manuscripts for comment. Invariably he then sent signed copies of his books.
A confirmed bachelor, James lived in a series of fine old apartments in Washington (and, for a time an historic house in Newcastle, Delaware). These always beautifully showcased his collections du jour. A favorite was the art deco Kennedy-Warren, backing on to the National Zoo; in the spring, with windows open, unlikely jungle animal sounds were heard.
I lived in Austin for most of this time, but visited Washington annually and greatly enjoyed picking up a telephone to hear him say, "Ahoy." He was the best of companions, knowledgable, funny and engaging. He is greatly missed by many.
The year before his death, James achieved a goal of many years, becoming an Hereditary Member of the Maryland Society of the Cincinnati.
Peter Flagg Maxson, Duxbury, Mass. 7 October 2020
James Goode, historian of Washington statues and architecture, dies at 80
Bart Barnes
WASHINGTON POST Jan. 7, 2020 at 4:24 p.m. CST
James Moore Goode, a Smithsonian Institution historian and author who wrote books about the statues and architecture of Washington, specializing in the out-of-the-way, the lesser-known, the trivial, the no-longer extant and the never-heard-of, died Dec. 12 at a hospital in the District. He was 80.
The cause was congestive heart failure, said a friend and former Smithsonian colleague, Amy Ballard.
From Dr. Goode's books, a reader could learn that the statuary trove of the national capital includes not only monuments to presidents and statesmen like Washington and Lincoln but also the details about replicas of at least 73 animals, catalogued alphabetically from alligators to woodchucks. There is a bronze sculpture of a gray wolf outside the Washington headquarters of the conservation group Defenders of Wildlife.
Because Washington is a world capital, it's predictable that Mexico would have a statue here of Emiliano Zapata, the hero of the Mexican revolution. It's understandable that Polish pianist, patriot and statesman Ignacy Jan Paderewski would get a statue from his native Poland, even though he died in New York.
But who has heard of John Howard Payne?
Dr. Goode found a large statue to Payne next to his grave in Georgetown's Oak Hill Cemetery. He was an American actor, writer and diplomat who, according to a 2009 Washington Post column by John Kelly, is better known as the lyricist in 1822 of "Home! Sweet Home!" The song includes the line, "Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home."
Also at Oak Hill is John A. Joyce, an Irish immigrant and Civil War colonel from a Kentucky regiment. According to Dr. Goode, Joyce commissioned a statue of himself several years before he died. Joyce claimed authorship of a poem published in 1885 that included the familiar lines "Laugh and the world laughs with you/ Weep and you weep alone."
But soon after the poem was published, a young Wisconsin woman, Ella Wheeler, charged plagiarism, citing publication in the New York Sun newspaper in 1883 of a poem containing similar lines that she had written and for which she had been paid $5.
"Joyce refused to acknowledge that she was the real author," Dr. Goode wrote in 2009. "He even had the two lines carved on his tombstone shortly before he died."
From years of walking tours of the city and suburbs came much of Dr. Goode's material, not only on statues but also books about elegant architecture, torn down in the name of progress ("Capital Losses," 2003); and the finest and most highly posh of the city's apartments ("Best Addresses," 1988).
Among the best of those remaining is the McCormick at 1785 Massachusetts Avenue. Banker and former treasury secretary Andrew Mellon once occupied a 25-room, 11,000-square-foot penthouse apartment in the Beaux Arts building, which was built in 1915 and is also known as the Andrew Mellon Building.
Leading walking tours about the city, "I kept seeing buildings come down, and invariably something worse went up," Dr. Goode told The Post in 2003. Over nine years he compiled a block-by-block survey of 252 buildings that had been demolished, including the historic Rhodes Tavern, which was torn down in 1984, and the Valley View mansion on Foxhall Road, one of Washington's last and largest grand estates and which was torn down in final years of the last century.
James Moore Goode was born Sept. 17, 1939, in Statesville, N.C., where his father was a corporate treasurer. He graduated from the University of South Carolina in 1964 and received a master's degree from the University of Virginia in 1966.
He was a portly man who relished dining at restaurants rated with multiple stars, but also had his favorite neighborhood taverns, comfortable but undistinguished. His dress was correct and conservative, often wearing suspenders and usually a hat when he went outside. He collected silver, portraits and stamps.
Habitually he answered the telephone with the word "Ahoy," which he liked to point out was the original telephone salutation suggested by Alexander Graham Bell. It was later supplanted by Thomas Edison's suggestion, "Hello."
He came to the Washington area in 1966 as a teacher of American history at George Mason University, then from 1968 to 1970 was a reference librarian at the Library of Congress. From 1970 to 1987, he was a Smithsonian Institution staffer who organized exhibits and lectures, gave walking tours and wrote books. He resigned in 1988 to work on a doctoral degree in American studies, which he received from George Washington University in 1995.
In 2015 he received the second annual Visionary Historian Award from the Historical Society of Washington D.C. for a "lifetime body of work [which] represents the highest achievement in the study of Washington, D.C."
Kelly wrote in his 2009 story on Dr. Goode, published a year after his 1974 book "Washington Sculpture" was reissued: "Statues tell stories, especially in Washington, a statue-rich town. Whom we decide to commemorate, and how, reveals something about us as a society. And what you can't tell from looking at the sculpture, Goode reveals in his book."
----------------------------------------
I met James in 1972. I'd just left the left the Army and had six months to fill before I hoped to fill before I hoped beginning graduate work in architectural history at the University of Virginia. James at age 32 was curator of the Smithsonian castle. Working as an unpaid assistant I correctly thought would help with admissions far more than selling sweaters in a department store in that time slot. It did, but I hadn't expected an almost 50-year friendship as the greatest payment.
Working for James was a great pleasure. He was very knowledgable on so many topics, and shared his insights enthusiastically. The Castle was and is an extraordinary building, and James was Vestal of the Temple. He had long since decided that second tier antiques would be the same cost as good modern office furniture, so if a chair or desk were needed, we'd often drive to Philadelphia to shop, and he could explain why the curve of the leg made one table far better than another seemingly identical piece. I was also a research assistant on his first book, The Outdoor Sculpture of Washington DC, and he made poking around musty archives quite pleasurable. He provided a scholarly overview, but also had a great knack for unearthing relevant 19th century gossip and terrific historic photos. I also found working at the Smithsonian a revelation, with a large Andrew Wyeth painting in my office or seeing the vast warehouses in Maryland varied collections of, say, tall case clocks in a quantity reminiscent of closing scenes of "Indiana Jones."
James was a great collector himself. When we met, he'd moved from English furniture to very fine American Empire pieces, then only beginning to be appreciated. He continued in cycles - mezzotints, rare architectural books, teapots, self-portraits of living artists (including several nudes!) and bookplates. The latter collection began when a colleague gave him one of Hitler's bookplates taken from his final bunker, and James had hundreds more of great beauty or owned by persons of transcendent importance. I was honored that James continued to pick my brain on various bookplate owners and sent several manuscripts for comment. Invariably he then sent signed copies of his books.
A confirmed bachelor, James lived in a series of fine old apartments in Washington (and, for a time an historic house in Newcastle, Delaware). These always beautifully showcased his collections du jour. A favorite was the art deco Kennedy-Warren, backing on to the National Zoo; in the spring, with windows open, unlikely jungle animal sounds were heard.
I lived in Austin for most of this time, but visited Washington annually and greatly enjoyed picking up a telephone to hear him say, "Ahoy." He was the best of companions, knowledgable, funny and engaging. He is greatly missed by many.
The year before his death, James achieved a goal of many years, becoming an Hereditary Member of the Maryland Society of the Cincinnati.
Peter Flagg Maxson, Duxbury, Mass. 7 October 2020
Bart Barnes
WASHINGTON POST Jan. 7, 2020 at 4:24 p.m. CST
James Moore Goode, a Smithsonian Institution historian and author who wrote books about the statues and architecture of Washington, specializing in the out-of-the-way, the lesser-known, the trivial, the no-longer extant and the never-heard-of, died Dec. 12 at a hospital in the District. He was 80.
The cause was congestive heart failure, said a friend and former Smithsonian colleague, Amy Ballard.
From Dr. Goode's books, a reader could learn that the statuary trove of the national capital includes not only monuments to presidents and statesmen like Washington and Lincoln but also the details about replicas of at least 73 animals, catalogued alphabetically from alligators to woodchucks. There is a bronze sculpture of a gray wolf outside the Washington headquarters of the conservation group Defenders of Wildlife.
Because Washington is a world capital, it's predictable that Mexico would have a statue here of Emiliano Zapata, the hero of the Mexican revolution. It's understandable that Polish pianist, patriot and statesman Ignacy Jan Paderewski would get a statue from his native Poland, even though he died in New York.
But who has heard of John Howard Payne?
Dr. Goode found a large statue to Payne next to his grave in Georgetown's Oak Hill Cemetery. He was an American actor, writer and diplomat who, according to a 2009 Washington Post column by John Kelly, is better known as the lyricist in 1822 of "Home! Sweet Home!" The song includes the line, "Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home."
Also at Oak Hill is John A. Joyce, an Irish immigrant and Civil War colonel from a Kentucky regiment. According to Dr. Goode, Joyce commissioned a statue of himself several years before he died. Joyce claimed authorship of a poem published in 1885 that included the familiar lines "Laugh and the world laughs with you/ Weep and you weep alone."
But soon after the poem was published, a young Wisconsin woman, Ella Wheeler, charged plagiarism, citing publication in the New York Sun newspaper in 1883 of a poem containing similar lines that she had written and for which she had been paid $5.
"Joyce refused to acknowledge that she was the real author," Dr. Goode wrote in 2009. "He even had the two lines carved on his tombstone shortly before he died."
From years of walking tours of the city and suburbs came much of Dr. Goode's material, not only on statues but also books about elegant architecture, torn down in the name of progress ("Capital Losses," 2003); and the finest and most highly posh of the city's apartments ("Best Addresses," 1988).
Among the best of those remaining is the McCormick at 1785 Massachusetts Avenue. Banker and former treasury secretary Andrew Mellon once occupied a 25-room, 11,000-square-foot penthouse apartment in the Beaux Arts building, which was built in 1915 and is also known as the Andrew Mellon Building.
Leading walking tours about the city, "I kept seeing buildings come down, and invariably something worse went up," Dr. Goode told The Post in 2003. Over nine years he compiled a block-by-block survey of 252 buildings that had been demolished, including the historic Rhodes Tavern, which was torn down in 1984, and the Valley View mansion on Foxhall Road, one of Washington's last and largest grand estates and which was torn down in final years of the last century.
James Moore Goode was born Sept. 17, 1939, in Statesville, N.C., where his father was a corporate treasurer. He graduated from the University of South Carolina in 1964 and received a master's degree from the University of Virginia in 1966.
He was a portly man who relished dining at restaurants rated with multiple stars, but also had his favorite neighborhood taverns, comfortable but undistinguished. His dress was correct and conservative, often wearing suspenders and usually a hat when he went outside. He collected silver, portraits and stamps.
Habitually he answered the telephone with the word "Ahoy," which he liked to point out was the original telephone salutation suggested by Alexander Graham Bell. It was later supplanted by Thomas Edison's suggestion, "Hello."
He came to the Washington area in 1966 as a teacher of American history at George Mason University, then from 1968 to 1970 was a reference librarian at the Library of Congress. From 1970 to 1987, he was a Smithsonian Institution staffer who organized exhibits and lectures, gave walking tours and wrote books. He resigned in 1988 to work on a doctoral degree in American studies, which he received from George Washington University in 1995.
In 2015 he received the second annual Visionary Historian Award from the Historical Society of Washington D.C. for a "lifetime body of work [which] represents the highest achievement in the study of Washington, D.C."
Kelly wrote in his 2009 story on Dr. Goode, published a year after his 1974 book "Washington Sculpture" was reissued: "Statues tell stories, especially in Washington, a statue-rich town. Whom we decide to commemorate, and how, reveals something about us as a society. And what you can't tell from looking at the sculpture, Goode reveals in his book."
----------------------------------------
I met James in 1972. I'd just left the left the Army and had six months to fill before I hoped to fill before I hoped beginning graduate work in architectural history at the University of Virginia. James at age 32 was curator of the Smithsonian castle. Working as an unpaid assistant I correctly thought would help with admissions far more than selling sweaters in a department store in that time slot. It did, but I hadn't expected an almost 50-year friendship as the greatest payment.
Working for James was a great pleasure. He was very knowledgable on so many topics, and shared his insights enthusiastically. The Castle was and is an extraordinary building, and James was Vestal of the Temple. He had long since decided that second tier antiques would be the same cost as good modern office furniture, so if a chair or desk were needed, we'd often drive to Philadelphia to shop, and he could explain why the curve of the leg made one table far better than another seemingly identical piece. I was also a research assistant on his first book, The Outdoor Sculpture of Washington DC, and he made poking around musty archives quite pleasurable. He provided a scholarly overview, but also had a great knack for unearthing relevant 19th century gossip and terrific historic photos. I also found working at the Smithsonian a revelation, with a large Andrew Wyeth painting in my office or seeing the vast warehouses in Maryland varied collections of, say, tall case clocks in a quantity reminiscent of closing scenes of "Indiana Jones."
James was a great collector himself. When we met, he'd moved from English furniture to very fine American Empire pieces, then only beginning to be appreciated. He continued in cycles - mezzotints, rare architectural books, teapots, self-portraits of living artists (including several nudes!) and bookplates. The latter collection began when a colleague gave him one of Hitler's bookplates taken from his final bunker, and James had hundreds more of great beauty or owned by persons of transcendent importance. I was honored that James continued to pick my brain on various bookplate owners and sent several manuscripts for comment. Invariably he then sent signed copies of his books.
A confirmed bachelor, James lived in a series of fine old apartments in Washington (and, for a time an historic house in Newcastle, Delaware). These always beautifully showcased his collections du jour. A favorite was the art deco Kennedy-Warren, backing on to the National Zoo; in the spring, with windows open, unlikely jungle animal sounds were heard.
I lived in Austin for most of this time, but visited Washington annually and greatly enjoyed picking up a telephone to hear him say, "Ahoy." He was the best of companions, knowledgable, funny and engaging. He is greatly missed by many.
The year before his death, James achieved a goal of many years, becoming an Hereditary Member of the Maryland Society of the Cincinnati.
Peter Flagg Maxson, Duxbury, Mass. 7 October 2020
