"A Citadel of Women's Independence"

The National Woman’s Party, Congress, and the Fight to Preserve the Belmont House

By Dr. Caitlyn Jones, Mellon Humanities Postdoctoral Fellow

The Alva Belmont House, headquarters of the National Woman's Party, 1970. Hart Senate Office Building in background National Woman's Party, Library of Congress

In January 1931, the National Woman's Party (NWP) opened the doors to its fifth and final headquarters. The Georgian-style home in Capitol Hill had stood since the early 1800s. Once the NWP came along, it became the Alva Belmont House. Speakers at the dedication ceremony dubbed the house a “laboratory of feminism” and a “citadel of woman’s independence.”1

Alva Belmont herself, the wealthy socialite who purchased the property, had high hopes for the future of the home. “May it stand for years and years to come," the NWP president predicted, "telling of the work that the women of the United States have accomplished; the example we have given foreign nations; and our determination that they shall be – as ourselves – free citizens, recognized as the equals of men.”2

The issue of how long the Belmont House would stand immediately came into question from its next-door neighbor, the US Congress. Twenty-four days after the dedication ceremony, the House Committee on Public Buildings and Grounds held a hearing on a bill to demolish the NWP headquarters. They wanted to make way for a new Bureau of Accounts building.3 The bill failed, but it sparked a decades-long battle between Congress and the NWP over control of the property.

Today's visitors know the Belmont House as the Belmont-Paul Women’s Equality National Monument. The NWP knew it as a symbol of their proximity to political power and their perseverance as an organization. Upon its founding in 1913, the organization made its home in four different headquarters in only sixteen years. They lost previous buildings to eviction or seizure from the federal government; the Belmont House, their last headquarters, meant a place of their own. So, they spent the next forty years fighting Congress to keep it.

As fierce protectors of the Belmont House, the NWP carried on a tradition of women as historic preservationists. Much of its energy – and most of its resources – went toward repairing and maintaining the home. And its historic significance changed over the years as the modern women’s movement grew. By the time the National Park Service became the owner of the site in 2016, the NWP had transformed the Belmont House from a home of "great men" into a shrine for their own feminist heroines.

“May it stand for years and years to come, telling of the work that the women of the United States have accomplished; the example we have given foreign nations; and our determination that they shall be – as ourselves – free citizens, recognized as the equals of men.”

Where this belongs

• Belmont-Paul Women's Equality National Monument

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