Adolf Cluss House

"Adolf Cluss, born in 1825 in Heilbronn, emigrated to the United States in 1848 at the time of the failed revolution in the German states. Until 1858 he was a member of the Communist League around Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. In the years after the American Civil War, he became the most influential architect in Washington DC, especially known for his model schools and other public buildings. In 1859, Adolf Cluss married Rosa Schmidt at Baltimore's Zion Lutheran Church. The couple then embarked on a wedding trip to Europe. They lived for the next thirty-five years in a modest row house on Second Street in northwest Washington, where they raised seven children."