Open House at The Brewmaster's Castle February 3, 2006

Brewmaster?s Castle Plans Special Friday Night Open House

American University Grad Students to Host the Feb. 3 Event

WASHINGTON, DC. -- The New Hampshire Avenue mansion of German brewer Christian Heurich, which is at risk of being sold and lost to public use, will hold a special Friday Night Open House for area residents interested in touring its Gilded Age interiors on Friday, Feb. 3, from 5-9 p.m.

American University graduate students in history, historic preservation and related fields will assist visitors on self-guided tours of the most intact late-Victorian house museum in the country. Admission is $5, and no reservations are required. The Brewmaster?s Castle is located at 1307 New Hampshire Ave., NW, at the corner of 20th & New Hampshire, one block west of Metro?s Dupont Circle South stop on the Red Line.

Brewmaster Christian Heurich?s widow left the 30-room mansion to what is now the Historical Society of Washington, DC in 1956, and the Society maintained it as a house museum and Society headquarters open to the public for 37 years. When the Society decided to move the new City Museum in 2003 and put the house up for sale, a public foundation was formed to buy the house and prevent its sale to a restaurant group and conversion to a private club. Rising interest rates have drained the Heurich House Foundation?s reserves, and unless the Foundation can raise $250,000 by Feb. 15 to cure default on interest payments, the house may have to be sold. This would likely mean the public will no longer have access to the building former Fine Arts Commission Secretary Charles Atherton called one of the most important local historic sites in Washington, DC

For more information, visit www.brewmasterscastle.com