English: 2230 S Street NW in Washington, D.C., in the United States. One stop on the 2013 Kalorama House Tour.
This 1924 Georgian Revival-style home was designed by architect Pleasants Pennington. The 28-room mansion was commissioned by Adolf Miller, chairman of the Federal Reserve. He died in the home of a stroke on February 11, 1953. His will left the home to the National Gallery of Art. His widow, Mary Sprague Miller, was permitted to live in the home until her death. (Miller also donated Van Dyk's "Portrait of a Young Man", Cranach's "Madonna and Child", and several works by Benson, Bruyn, and Gertner.) Mrs. Miller died on January 10, 1957. The National Gallery of Art sold the home to Hamilton Robinson in 1958. Various people rented the home from Robinson. Author Herman Wouk lived here from 1966 to 1968, during which he wrote most of his novel "The Winds of War". Richard Van Lennep (son of Guggenheim heiress Rebecca Pollard Van Lennep Guggenheim Logan) lived here as well in the mid 1980s. In 1995, the building was sold to a development company, 2230 LLC (a part of the William J. Bray, Jr. real estate development company), which gutted the interior. The company then sold it to M. Robert Guggenheim, Jr. in 1996. He sold it a year later to Esther Coopersmith.
Esther Lipsen was born and raised in Mazomanie, Wisconsin. She loved politics, and at the age of 17 managed Senator Estes Kefauver's Wisconsin Presidential primary campaign of 1952. She came to Washington, D.C., in 1954 to work for Kefauver and married wealthy lawyer Jack Coopersmith. The couple had four children. President Jimmy Carter named her his Ambassador to the United Nations in 1979. From 1981 to 1993 she was Advisor to the U.S. Commission to the United Nations Status of Women Commission, and from 1999 to 200 was President Clintons’s Observer to UNESCO. She received the United Nations Peace Prize in 1984 and the UNESCO Award in 2008.
Coopersmith is consider the premiere hostess of Washington, D.C. She routinely brings together many of the city's diplomats, elected officials, executive branch leaders, members of Congress, attorneys, news analysts, and others for elegant, nonpartisan lunches and dinners at her home. Anybody who is anybody will be invited (often repeatedly) to the Coopersmith home for an luxurious meal amid her countless photographs and memorabilia of a half-century lived among the power elite. Coopersmith is also considered the "den mother of political fund-raising" for her unique ability to bring together leading lights of the Democratic Party with the top political donors in the country.
The $6.5 million home features nine bedrooms, five full bathrooms, three half-bathrooms, and has 13,078 square feet of living space.
A terraced garden is aligned with the house in the rear. A brick upper terrace is near the house, and short steps lead down to a mid-level terrace with fountain. A small, kidney-shaped swimming pool is nestled beneath the trees in the southwest corner.