Bought for The Mayor, Sold After A Snit

First came the collapse of philanthropist Betty Casey's controversial 2001 plan to spend $50 million on a grand mayoral mansion on Washington's Foxhall Road.

Now comes the sale of 10 truckloads of antiques she so eagerly bought to furnish it, from a 1760 mahogany Irish wake table upon which generations of dearly departed were laid out ($165,000) to a Queen Anne highboy owned by a signer of the Declaration of Independence ($39,000) to a pair of reproduction Chinese figurines from a museum shop ($100).

More than $1 million worth of furniture, silver, artwork, books and porcelain are on exhibit at Brockett's Row Antiques & Fine Art in Alexandria, where an invitation-only preview sale is set for Saturday night. The public can start buying on Sunday. Proceeds will go to the Eugene B. Casey Foundation, established by Betty Casey's late husband, a major real estate developer and Washington native.

One of the most important pieces -- a circa-1820 Boston Federal mahogany server, its carving attributed to architect Samuel McIntire, known as the carver of Salem -- has already been snapped up by an unnamed collector. He bought it last week after seeing it in a full-page ad for the sale in the July issue of Antiques magazine, said Elizabeth Wainstein, the owner of Brockett's. She would not disclose the price.

Washington attorney Brendan V. Sullivan Jr., who represents the notoriously press-shy Casey, said she began acquiring furnishings not long after buying the property in the leafy Northwest neighborhood. The $16. 5 million price tag for one of the last great parcels of city real estate set a residential record for Washington.

"Early in the project, when she saw a thing that would look good in the house, she bought it," said Sullivan, adding that he has no idea how much she spent on the furnishings. Some pieces came from private dealers such as Wainstein and Piotr Pawlowski of Rockville, some from auctions and other sources.

When Casey, 77, announced her plan to tear down the deteriorating 1930s neo-Georgian house known as the Brady mansion and build a splendid new residence where the mayor could suitably entertain the rich and powerful of the world, the city split into opposing camps.

Supporters thought the price was right (virtually free) for what, in preliminary models and drawings, was a stately, 18,000-square-foot working residence to be named the Casey Mansion. It was modeled on Gracie Mansion, New York's grand mayoral abode.

Initial drawings called for a 12,000-square-foot public level that included a ballroom, rotunda reception room, large dining room, commercial kitchen and several sitting and meeting rooms, said Washington architect Stephen Vanze, who worked on the project with business partner Anthony Barnes. The 4,000-square-foot private quarters upstairs would include four bedrooms, a living room, dining room and family room, plus a 2,000-square-foot guest suite.

Critics complained that no Washington mayor should live in such isolated splendor. Some neighbors feared traffic congestion, or opposed Casey's later attempt to add four acres of federal parkland to the site. Others feared the large police presence needed to guard the mayor and the property would leave other parts of the city under-protected.

Last December, after nearly three years of conflict, Betty Casey pulled the plug. She sold the land for $25 million to St. Patrick's Episcopal Day School across Foxhall Road, said Sullivan, and gave the proceeds to the Salvation Army, which plans to build a community center in Anacostia.

None of these messy details appeared in the magazine ad for this weekend's sale. The antiques were discreetly described as having been "assembled for the once-proposed mayor's mansion for Washington, D.C."

"There was some important 18th-century furniture that would have gone in the formal rooms and some less formal furniture, such as an English lowboy, that would have gone in the residence," said Wainstein, who sold some of the pieces to Casey in the first place.

It is unclear who else, besides the lone benefactress, would have had a role in acquiring or vetting the furnishings and setting out an overall design scheme.

At Gracie Mansion, built between 1799 and 1809, "the point was to showcase the best of New York," said interior designer Jamie Drake, who redid the mansion for Mayor Michael Bloomberg in 2002. "All of the antiques for the house are from New York makers or reflect some history or context of New York. All of the fabrics and trims were ordered through New York-based sources."

And what might he have suggested for Washington? "In the best of all worlds one does strive to showcase the best of the environment you are in when creating a public space." American furniture "would have been the tack I would have taken," said Drake. "Being the seat of the country, you could have appropriately chosen things from Boston, Philadelphia and New York. And being a new house, you could have chosen the best of American modern design -- Donghia, Holly Hunt with a Chicago base, and on the West Coast, Nancy Corzine and J. Robert Scott."

All that is now moot, of course, because the mansion plan is history.

When told of the Casey antiques sell-a-thon, D.C. Council member Jim Graham (D-Ward 1) -- never a big fan of the mansion project -- said the entire saga, from property acquisition to furniture deaccession, "has the quality of a Moliere farce."

He saluted Casey as a "generous, well-intentioned individual," but added, "this is what you do when you have a lot of money. You can be somewhat casual about how you spend it."

Brockett's Row Antiques & Fine Art, 277 S. Washington St., Alexandria; Monday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Sunday, 1 to 5 p.m.; 703-684-0464.