The business apparently took its toll on Corby’s 16-year marriage, however. In 1906, Jennie Corby filed for divorce on the grounds of infidelity. Four months later, Corby married Muriel Hannah Clark, daughter of a Treasury official.
The two eventually moved into the Newlands house and began a 25-year remodeling project that would transform the property into an English-inspired manor. Arthur Heaton, the Washington architect who helped design and build the National Cathedral, would direct the renovation.
Corby chose a Native American name for his new home, Ishpiming, Chippewa for “high ground.” It was a curious choice for a home that would become the picture of 16th century England. Tudor-style walls of exposed half-timbers and plaster now encased the upper levels, with leaded glass in the gables’ casement windows. Parterres, box plants clipped into quaint bird shapes and a velvety lawn surrounded the house. The southern front overlooked a sunken water garden with lilies, bordered by monthly roses.
Visitors entered the grand foyer with its separate men’s and women’s coat rooms. The interior was strictly in the manorial manner, with dark oak paneling, huge tapestries, splendid paintings and carved furniture. The living room to the west featured an intricately plastered ceiling; the great hall to the east, a magnificent Aeolian pipe organ rising two stories in a sumptuous music room lit by stained glass windows.
“The softened colors of vast antique tapestries, the varying sunset tones of some of Lucien Powell’s finest canvases, the glint of Florentine armor combine,” the Post gushed in 1933, “in a setting ideal for listening to the harmonies of a Beethoven sonata, a Chopin waltz or the rollicking airs of ‘The Beggar’s Opera.’ A Broadway tune would be sacrilege in such surroundings.” (A later owner would remove the organ and install an elevator in its place.)
Upstairs, three master bedrooms had their own dressing rooms, baths and fireplaces. On the third floor were guest bedrooms, sitting rooms and baths with marble showers, along with dance rehearsal rooms and an artist’s studio.
In 1925, the Corby brothers sold their baking empire to the Continental Baking Company. Ten years later, William Corby died of a heart attack at the family’s summer home in Moultonboro, N.H. He left his estate to his wife, Muriel, and daughters Justine and Eleanor, with the proviso that the girls’ sizable fortunes could never be inherited by their husbands.
Muriel remained at Ishpiming for the next 30 years, filling the house with priceless objects gathered on her travels. “She had an obsession for buying lovely things, whether she needed them or not,” a friend recalled in an interview with the Post. “I remember once she came back from a trip and draped Oriental materials all over the house to show us. And then she just boxed them and put them away.”
After her death in 1967, 750 lots of antiques were auctioned off. Sloan’s, the Washington auction house, termed it “one of the finest collections to be offered in Washington.”
The daughters willed the house to the National Cathedral School for Girls, which both had attended. Zoning, however, prevented the property from being anything other than a residence.
The house has since passed through a number of private owners. And in 1991, it was purchased by shopping center developer J.J. Cafaro. In a peculiar twist of history, Cafaro, like the home’s original owner, Francis Newlands, has found himself embroiled in controversy over the years. He pleaded guilty in 2002 to attempting to bribe former Congressman James Traficant, and recently faced charges of falsifying a campaign contribution.
Mark Walston is an author and historian raised in Bethesda and now living in Olney.
