Last week, we looked at Adelaide Johnson’s life and her most famous sculpture. Unfortunately, the moment the Portrait Monument was installed in the Capitol was also the beginning of the end for her. After this, she appears in the newspapers only to give the occasional address, and to leave wreaths at her sculpture in the Capitol on Susan B. Anthony’s birthday, or other such dates. She continued to travel to Europe, and eventually settled back on Capitol Hill, moving to 230 Maryland Avenue NE in 1926. The following year, she filed paperwork to expand the studio, turning the building into a museum for her works, including two salons.
But, as to new sculptures, there is no indication.
The low point in her life came in 1939, when her failure to pay taxes on her studio caused it to be sold at auction, and drove her to attacking her artwork with a sledgehammer. The Evening Star reported on November 13, 1939:
The artist invited newspaper reporters to her unheated home, 230 Maryland avenue N.E., today to see a part of the destruction she has already carried out. Eight marble busts and a medallion of the noted feminist leaders – Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott – had been chipped and shattered.
A last-minute gift of $1,000 saved her home for the time being, but her refusal to sell any of her sculptures eventually led to her losing ownership. All was not lost, however: The National Women’s Party paid her rent for the next several years so that she could remain in her studio/museum.
And remain she did. In 1947, the 87-year-old Johnson decided that she had lived almost a full century, and the Star reported that she was “looking forward eagerly” to 4 p.m. on September 26, as it was that moment that would round out the full 100 years. However, they could not help but notice that her house was “small and sparsely furnished” and that “the floor was rugless and the table…was a makeshift affair at best.”
After that, the newspapers continued to credulously report as her age crept up: 104 years in 1950 (when she was really 91) and 109 in 1955 (96). By now, Johnson had moved around the corner to 126 C Street NE, sharing a house with Meta Grace Keebler, a long-time supporter of the National Women’s Party. Johnson managed to hold on to her studio by any means necessary, including by going on TV, winning $500 on Strike it Rich in 1951 and $300 on Wheel of Fortune in 1953, which allowed her to pay her back rent.
In July, 1955, during a prolonged heat wave, Johnson suffered a stroke, and was taken to D.C. General. After a rough two weeks, she rallied and celebrated her “109th” birthday in the hospital, before finally succumbing on November 10 of that year. Her obituary in the Star perpetuates another myth about her; namely, that she had met Abraham Lincoln during his first campaign for President, when she was – in reality – almost exactly a year old.
Members of Christ Church gave her a plot in Congressional Cemetery, where she lies today under a simple flat stone that indicates her true birth and death dates: 1859 – 1955. Other than that, none of the houses she lived in on Capitol Hill remain, having been razed either for Senate parking or condominiums. Only the Portrait Monument abides.