The Somerset Historic District
Chaddock/Shipley House - c. 1906
This 5 bay square Colonial Revival with central sidelighted entry is a testament to how some of the houses in our historic district have changed over the years, yet still maintain an historic quality and uphold the integrity of the streetscape. Built around 1906, the home has undergone about six additions or renovations. A photograph of the home taken about 1915 hangs in the family room. It shows a far smaller and plainer structure than the present house with its sweeping wrap-around porch and attractive blue and white window awnings. Another photograph shows the damage caused to one of the later additions during the historic storm of July 1989.
The lot on which this house was built was sold in 1905 to Benjamin Frick. Mr. Frick sold the lot to J. B. Chaddock in June 1906 and the house was probably built shortly after. Mr. Chaddock sold the house to Mr. J. Q.Shipley in 1909. Mr. Shipley was the local mail carrier -- he delivered mail by horse and wagon. In 1919 the house was sold to Thomas Dowd, Washington manager of Postal Telegraph, a rival company to Western Union and later bought out by them. Tom Dowd and his wife had five children: Tom, Frances, Bob, Eddie, and Elsie. When the first Mrs. Dowd died, Mr. Dowd married again. His second wife, Dorothy, was a psychiatrist at Georgetown Medical School. Elsie Dowd Kennedy visited the house in 2002 and reminisced about "the large barn that was out back, where we raised chickens...a garage [that] sat near the eastern property line (where the poured concrete steps were added as a shortcut to the neighbors' house)...and 'the large cornfield' where the houses on Drummond are now." Mrs. Kennedy also noted that her parents added the present living room and two bedrooms above it, on the western side of the house, shortly after they moved in.
In 1980, Elizabeth K. and Reed Hundt, later the Chairman of the FCC under President Clinton, purchased the house and added a family room and master bedroom. In 1989, a dining room and kitchen addition were completed and the front entry was repositioned. The house sold to its present owners in 1990.
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