How The Schools of Capitol Hill Got Their Name: Maury Elementary

Photo by Elizabeth Festa

Just north of Lincoln Park, where Tennessee and Constitution Avenues intersect with 13th, lies one of Capitol Hill’s most historic schools, Maury Elementary. Maury has been a fixture of the Hill since its construction in 1886 and is one of the best examples of the eight room schoolhouse that was standard in the 1880s and 90s, unlike others on the Hill that were torn down.

Almost certainly, Maury Elementary has stood the test of time better than its namesake, John Walker Maury. Maury was a one-term mayor of Washington, elected in 1854 and defeated by a Know Nothing party candidate, John Towers. Incidentally, John Towers also got a Capitol Hill school named after him, on the corner of 8th and C St, SE, which, fittingly for someone who represented so vile a platform, has since been razed and forgotten. Maury was a well respected banker and a member of a stalwart and influential Virginia family. His great-grandfather had founded the Maury Classical School, which educated our third, fourth and fifth presidents, and his uncle, Matthew Fontaine Maury, is still well known in naval history circles for his groundbreaking work as an early oceanographer and cartographer. Maury Elementary across the river in Alexandria is named for him.

But back to our subject, John Walker Maury wasn’t a total waste in his short tenure as Mayor. Along with banker and philanthropist William Wilson Corcoran, Mayor Maury persuaded Congress to pony up the money to establish the Government Hospital for the Insane, affectionately known as St. Elizabeth’s. According to his sons, Maury and Corcoran were initially rebuffed in their attempts to lobby the House Appropriations Committee, and “climbed through a window of the closed building assisted by the convenience of a watchman, who had an inkling of the errand of mercy they were on, and how they boldly faced the committee without apology.” Maury also loaned money to sculptor Clark Mills to finance work on his statue of Andrew Jackson, which, as any tourist can tell you, still stands in Lafayette Square in front of the White House.

Photo by Cason Krepp

Other than that, Maury would hardly be remembered today if not for the school. Following his defeat in 1856, part of a nationwide, but fortuitously short lived, boom of the Know-Nothing Party, John Walker Maury just up and died. President Pierce and his neighbor, Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri both attended the funeral. Like the namesake of 24 other DC Public Schools, John Walker Maury is buried in Capitol Hill’s own Congressional Cemetery, under a towering white marble tombstone, with his wife and some of his twelve children. Perhaps he can take comfort that his political rival John Tower’s grave lies at his feet, with a considerably smaller marker.