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Observations
	Fighting to save a landmark (Published February 6, 2006) By CARRIE DEVORAH

Gary Heurich, descendant of brewmaster Christian Heurich Sr., stood in the arboretum of the Brewmaster’s Castle, his apple cheeks glowing as he shared with American University graduate students how the castle’s garden came to be named Castle Park.

"The Huckleberry Kids," as Gary calls the Dupont Circle area day care toddlers seen walking between guide ropes or wheeled in red Cabbage Patch Kid wagons by day care counselors, were once overheard to squeal in glee "Castle Park, Castle Park" when asked where they wanted to go for outdoor play. The walled-in backyard, sandwiched between the main residence and the carriage house, is perfect for child’s play and for adults to duck away from their responsibilities in the business building towering over this backyard. Heurich says Castle Park hosts over 2,500 guests during the course of a year, seeking respite at 20th Street and New Hampshire Avenue NW within the castle’s walls, a sanctuary for brown bagging, at no cost other than an investment of time.

Inside the castle, things are not so calm.

Heurich is in crisis mode. The castle needs $250,000 by Feb. 15 to stave off immediate loss of the historic property, once home to the Historical Society of the District of Columbia. A few years earlier, the historic landmark was facing conversion into a private club if its sale had gone through. With only a few months to raise funds, a stopgap measure was put in place, delaying the castle’s sale for five years. But after Feb. 15, $1.75 million still will be needed toward reducing the principal payment on the $5.45 million loan for saving the castle.

Upon advice, Heurich in 2003 established a 501(c)3 nonprofit foundation, the Heurich House Foundation. While the foundation’s IRS Form 990 can be seen on the charity search site www.Guidestar.org, Heurich recently established Friends of the Castle. Heurich posted a crisis note on Historic D.C.’s online listserv, seeking 1,000 donors of $250 each. One contributor to the site said their donation was conditional to the furnishings remaining with the castle. Questions remain unanswered as to who sits on the governing boards of the Heurich House Foundation and Friends of the Castle.

By Feb. 4, Heurich had raised little over $17,500 of the $250,000 since his plea for money went out. He says the castle has become his day job. His third-floor office, off limits to castle visitors, is cluttered with papers, books, files strewn in his effort to raise the needed funds to keep the building operating as a family historic site. An oversized jar shows beer is in Gary Heurich’s blood. Rather than being filled with cookies, candies or peanuts, it is filled with beer bottle caps, a giveaway that supporting Heurich’s drive to save the castle is quite personal.

Gary Heurich is the castle today, the only one of 11 grandchildren who never met his grandmother Amelia. Amelia gifted the castle to the historical society one year before her death. Stories of his ancestral home are personal recollections of pride, prohibition, stubbornness and determination by a great-grandfather who immigrated from Germany to America. A favorite story Heurich shares is of the young guest peeking inside the gilt-covered master bedroom. Upon seeing two twin beds, the child, to his parents’ embarrassment, wondered out loud how the Heurichs made babies.

In the second story hall of the castle, Heurich mesmerizes the students with the tale of his great-grandfather and his three wives. The first wife, Amelia, bought the land the castle was built on. She was the daughter of another brewmaster down the street. Hinting there may have been more than love in this deal, maybe a merge of the brew kings, Heurich said she died before ever building her house on the land. Without heirs, his great-grandfather sought a second and younger wife. She died childless. So Heurich Sr. sought to remarry an even younger wife, his dead Amelia’s niece. The skeleton in the Heurich family closet is that on their honeymoon, Christian had to keep admonishing his new bride not to call him Uncle Chris in public. Her name, by the way, was Amelia, named for her aunt, Heurich’s first wife. Heurich and his third wife had children. One died, portrayed as an angel baby with wings on the wall inside the arboretum overlooking the yard where the Huckleberry Kids come to play. Another, Christian Jr., would sneak into the parlor, closing the sliding doors behind him until one day he was caught, lying on the floor looking up at the painted images of semi-nude women that Heurich laughingly called Victorian porn.

History abounds within the castle’s four walls and outside. In the days of Amelia Two, women were not given keys to their houses. Husbands kept the only key to the front door. Amelia Two had the keys to all the locked doors inside the house. .She wore them on a key ring. But to gain entry upon returning home from shopping, Amelia would have to knock and wait until her butler would open the door to let her in.

Gary Heurich described a time when presidential security was lighter than it is today. One president would stroll past the castle’s arboretum on his way to court his future bride, his Secret Service detail following six feet behind. Today, Heurich says, on alternate travel days for Vice President Richard Cheney, the caucophony of sirens and motorcycles permeates the castle’s halls. The heavy wooden desk in the first room of the tour was a gift made by a foreign government to President Ulysses Grant. The State Department refused to pay the shipping cost for the floor-to-ceiling desk. Christian Heurich Sr. did. To the little German immigrant orphan boy turned modestly wealthy, owning something made for the president meant the world to him -- as did owning a piece of Monticello, which Christian Sr. donated to a women’s fund.

On the eve of this year’s Super Bowl, Heurich shared that his family tradition of Sunday dinner was tweaked when the Redskins came to D.C. One Heurich son bought season tickets, telling his mom to change the family dinner hour or he would not attend. During football season, Sunday supper was moved up one hour.

Due to the cost of tour guides, tour hours at the castle are limited to one tour on Wednesday and one tour on Saturday. Money that might otherwise hire tour guides has gone toward loan payments and daily operating costs. Volunteers are an option, says Heurich, but in a city filled with well-funded national museums, volunteerism at the castle hasn’t been a high priority to many, until Saturday. D.C. tour buses do not make it a cultural stop.

Heurich is proud that the castle operates in the black through funding earned by hosting weddings, private parties and public events including the National Cherry Blossom Princesses’ party. Other events are in the planning. On Valentine’s Day, champagne and truffles will be served to a black tie crowd for $75 per guest, 3:30 p.m. to midnight. A Capitol Brew exhibit of little-known history of brewing in the nation’s capital, 1796-1956, also is planned.

The AU graduate students Gary Heurich welcomed earlier into his castle saw the over 100 people crowding the Brewmaster’s Castle’s front steps for the 1:15 p.m. Saturday tour, responding to media coverage focused on saving the castle. They volunteered to stay and help. "Can you believe it?" said Heurich, seeing the crowd on his family doorstep in the pouring rain. "This is unexpected."

Well, not really. The fire within Heurich’s belly – the passion to preserve his past -- may be the fanciful cause of the signature green salamander way atop the castle turret, which Heurich tells guests is connected to gods of fire or the work of the generational ghosts living within its walls. An admitted Gemini, doing twice the work of one man during this stressful time, Heurich’s belated burning desire to save his family home is giving District of Columbia residents a chance to show they do care about Christian Heurich, the nation’s oldest brewmaster, history and private parks that little kids squeal over in delight.

Copyright 2006, The Common Denominator