Memorial Continental Hall. This, the first building in the present D.A.R. group to be erected, was designed by Edward Pearse Casey of New York and completed in 1910, its total cost being more than half a million dollars. It is intended to perpetuate the meory of those who helped to achieve American independence and serve as a national meeting place for the D.A.R. congresses.
The highly ornate rectangular building of Vermont marble is a free adaptation of Georgian architecture. Two colonnaded porticoes and corner pavilions dominate the exterior, the larger portico or porte-cochère forming the central feature of the main facade. The 13 monolithic Ionic columns of the semicircular south portico were presented by the D.A.R. chapters or by the legislatures of the Thirteen Original States, and stand in the order of entrance of these States into the Union.
Triple bronze doors at the main entrance memorialize the founders, charter members, and heroes of Connecticut and Massachusetts. The main entrance hall is designed in the characteristic manner of a Georgian hall, with delicate bas-relief ceiling, and marble walls enriched with fluted pilasters. Above the doorways, bull's-eye niches contain sculptured busts of Revolutionary heroes presented by various chapters. A feature of the south end of the south end of the corridor is a silver plaque engraved with the words of the Declaration of Independence.
The auditorium, seating 2,000, has the formal dignity of an old meeting hall, its white walls brightened by State flags hanging from the cornices. Light floods the room from a ground-glass ceiling from which the Betsy Ross flag is suspended. Galleries extend around three sides of the room, while a large stage on the fourth side is banked with tiers of boxes. A full-length portrait of Martha Washington, by E.F. Andrews, hangs in the south gallery; and in the north gallery is a painting, Washington on Dorchester Heights, by Darius Cobb. A table and chair on the platform are reproductions of those used at the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Peale's famous "porthole" portrait of Washington hangs on the stage wall. Directly over it are the insignia of the National society of the D.A.R., molded from British cannon captured at Saratoga in 1777 and presented by the Army and Navy Chapter. Beneath is a bronze tablet, present by the Federal Government in appreciation of the use of the hall for the plenary sessions of the Conference on the Limitation of Armament in 1921.
A series of sliding doors open from the auditorium into the north and south museum galleries, where more than 2,000 relics of Revolutionary days are preserved. cases hold examples of needlework, exhibits of silver, glass, china, jewelry, fans, dresses, household accessories, and weapons, all antedating 1830. The galleries themselves are excellent examples of Georgian architecture at its finest--parquet floors, walls decorated with coupled pilasters, and vaulted paneled ceilings.
Chapter Rooms. Many of the D.A.R. State chapters own individual rooms in Memorial Continental Hall and have furnished them in a manner typical of early American homes. Most of these represent drawing or dining rooms, but a music room containing harpsichord, melodeons, and flutinas, a children's attic paneled in pine by Wallace Nutting, and a bedroom with a four-poster and bed steps lend to the diversity. Another interesting room is the reproduction of a Colonial kitchen, with original brick fire place and a crane. - Washington, City and Capital, 1937, pg. 340-341.
The Memorial Continental Hall has changed little on its exterior since its construction. The interior has change significantly since the Guide was written. In 1943, the building was loaned to the American Red Cross for emergency wartime work. Five years later the auditorium was renovated for library use. The stage was removed and original floor replaced with a level one of reinforced concrete. Stacks were installed on the main floor, and the library opened in 1949. Further changes occurred in the mid-1960s when the sloping galleries on the east, north and south were remodeled to accommodate additional stacks and reading tables.
The Chapter rooms are still much as described in the Guide, now known as Period Rooms.
The building was listed as a National Historic Landmark in 1972 mainly due it being the site of the 1921-20 Washington Naval Conference.