On the evening of September 21, 1927, a Washington attorney named Alexander G. Bentley walked into a room at the Houston Hotel on E Street near Ninth and shot himself. He was 52. The Washington Post ran it on page one the next morning. His home address, given in the second sentence: 1627 Lamont Street Northwest.
This one came in as a tip. David flagged the building on Facebook, and once we started pulling records, 1627 Lamont turned into one of those addresses that keeps giving.
A 1908 Hunter & Bell walk-up on the eastern edge of Mount Pleasant
1627 Lamont is a four-story brick walk-up on the 1600 block of Lamont Street, between 16th and 17th, on the eastern edge of Mount Pleasant just off the Mount Pleasant Street commercial strip. The permit went up on April 28, 1908.
The architects were Hunter & Bell. The owner listed on the permit was George N. Bell, the “Bell” of the firm, who designed apartment buildings and put them up on his own account. Estimated cost, $30,000. Sixteen units originally (later subdivided into 21), brick and stone front, Indiana limestone trim, slag roof, steam heat.
1627 Lamont is listed as a contributing structure in the Mount Pleasant Historic District, per the DC Office of Planning’s HistoryQuest inventory.
The 1927 suicide of Alexander G. Bentley
The lead of the Post‘s September 22, 1927 front-page story is straight and short:
Alexander G. Bentley, 52 years old, a prominent attorney, living at 1627 Lamont street northwest, shot and killed himself at 6 o’clock yesterday evening in a room at the Houston Hotel, E street near Ninth street northwest. This morning he was to have been arrested on a charge of contempt of court and was facing a possible 90-day term in jail.
Bentley had been serving as a trustee in a case where the court wanted roughly $16,000 in assets produced. Three separate court orders demanded he produce them. He had not. The fourth order was going to send him to jail for 90 days.
He checked into the Houston Hotel that afternoon. Around six o’clock, someone in an adjacent room heard the shot.
Eight months later, Arthur Carroll called the cops on the cops
The next 1627 Lamont resident to make the Post was still alive. Arthur Carroll, president of Carroll Electric Company, filed a formal complaint with Major Edwin B. Hesse, DC’s superintendent of police, against three officers from the Tenth Precinct.
The officers, Carroll said, had shown up at his door at 3:45 in the morning to serve a traffic warrant and had threatened his family in the process. The story ran May 25, 1928, page five, under the headline “3 Policemen Accused of Abusing Authority.”
March 1942: the Beall-Raleigh engagement
By the early 1940s, the Post‘s society column carried a quieter kind of 1627 Lamont story. On March 2, 1942, page ten:
Mr. and Mrs. George H. Beall, of 1627 Lamont Street, announce the engagement and approaching wedding of their daughter, Miss Marjorie Beall to Robert Raleigh, son of Mr. and Mrs. Maurice Raleigh, of Brockton, Mass.
The wedding was set for March 7. Kalorama and Cleveland Park addresses dominated that column most weeks. A Mount Pleasant walk-up made the page too. Neighborhood.
Milton Browne, manager of Larimer’s Market, dies at home, 1950
Eight years after the Beall engagement, another obituary from the same door. September 8, 1950:
Milton L. Browne, 48, manager of Larimer’s Market and a life-long resident of the District, died unexpectedly Wednesday at his home, 1627 Lamont st. nw.
Larimer’s was a well-known Washington grocery chain of the era. Browne, born around 1902, was a lifelong Washingtonian. He died mid-week at his apartment, at 48.
The building today
1627 Lamont is still an apartment building. Hunter & Bell’s original 16 units are now 21. The last recorded arms-length sale was August 9, 1977, for $150,000. DC’s 2025 assessment puts the building at $5.12 million. Same owner since 1977.
Four named residents across four decades, a front-page suicide, a police-abuse complaint, a society-page engagement, and a lifelong Washingtonian who died in his living room. Not bad for a $30,000 walk-up on a secondary block.
Thanks to David for the tip.