Mayhem and intrigue has marked Lafayette Square over the centuries. After the Oklahoma City bombing of 1995, the section of Pennsylvania Avenue south of Lafayette Square, and adjacent to the White House, was for security reasons closed to vehicles. But on November 1, 1950, the Avenue bustled with traffic. And the historic Blair House, near the Square's southwestern edge, was home to President Truman. The White House was being renovated, and the President had taken up temporary quarters there.
That November afternoon was unusually hot, and after lunch Truman napped in the second-floor window facing the street. A lone Secret Service agent, Donald Birdzell, stood in the doorway. Two policemen sat in sentry booths on the sidewalk.
Suddenly two gunmen, Oscar Collazo and Griselio Torresola, rushed the house. They were Puerto Rican nationalists, hoping to secure independence for their island commonwealth by killing the President. Torresola shot policeman Lesley Coffelt in the head. Collazo shot agent Agent Birdzell in the leg.
Pandemonium struck the busy thoroughfare, with cars swerving and pedestrians scurrying. Awakened by the shots, Truman for a moment poked his head out the window. Cries of "Get back! Get back!" came from concerned citizens in the street.
Gunman Collazo was shot down in front of Blair House. Officer Coffelt, with literally his dying breath, shot the other assailant, Torresola, in the head. After two minutes and 27 bullets, the shooting ceased. Harry Truman had survived the only serious attempt on a president's life near the White House. On the iron rail to the left of the Blair House steps, a medallion to Lesley Coffelt commemorates the courageous officer's sacrifice (http://www.trumanlibrary.org/trivia/assassin.htm).
On the east side of Lafayette Square stands the Court of Claims. There, in the Civil War, stood the "Old Clubhouse" residence, where Dan Sickles and Philip Barton Key once socialized, and which then housed Lincoln's Secretary of State, William Seward. On the awful, Good Friday night of April 14, 1865, Seward was a target of one of John Wilkes Booth's band of assassins.
Seward was a sitting duck, having been badly hurt in a carriage accident a week before. He lay in the house's second-floor bedroom, his right arm broken and his sprained neck set in a heavy iron brace. Fortunately, his family was in the house to visit its ailing father. His daughter Fanny, his sons Augustus and Frederick, and two Union soldiers were with him at 10 P.M., when Booth killed Lincoln at the nearby Ford's Theater.
Soon after, William Payne, a hulking, ex-Confederate soldier, rode up to the house. He bounding up the stairs, meeting Frederick Seward, and beat in his skull with the butt end of a pistol. Then he rushed the elder Seward's bedroom, leaping on top of the Secretary of State and slashing him with his bowie knife. A violent brawl ensured. The other relatives of Seward and two soldiers wrestled Payne out of the room. Payne rushed out of the house and rode off, later to be caught and hanged with the rest of Booth's gang.
Seward survived the attack. Ironically, the thick metal brace from his carriage injury saved his throat from being cut. Five days after the attack, Seward was strong enough to sit up in bed--and watch Abraham Lincoln's funeral procession pass through Lafayette Square.
Behind its imposing statues and well-tended lawns, Lafayette Square reveals a sometimes violent past.
To go to Part 1, click here.
For National Park Service information on Lafayette Square, see: www.nps.gov/history/nr/travel/wash/Dc30.htm
For information on lodging near Lafayette Square, see: www.sofitel.com/gb/hotel-3293-sofitel-washington-dc-lafayette-square/index.shtml
A map of Lafayette Square can be found at: maps.google.com/maps
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