The Mansion On O Street

O Museum, O Street, Washington DC I first came across O Street on a wandering walk through the District on September 11, 2001. That morning, I was a judicial fellow at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and arrived at the DOT office complex in L’Enfant Plaza for my first day of orientation. I'd been to Washington many times as an administrative law judge, but it was my first time meeting my contacts at NHTSA. At 8:30 that morning, as tragedy unfolded, our world at NHTSA's D.C. headquarters was rapidly aging. The losses in New York, at the Pentagon, and on United Airlines Flight 93 are now known around the world. My NHTSA contact had family to get to and left me to my own devices. Transport turned into gridlock, so I left to walk to my hotel in Georgetown. The Smithsonian museums were locked down, as were most businesses. I had no plan beyond seeing what D.C. was like amid the turmoil of 9/11. I headed from L’Enfant Plaza toward Dupont Circle, hoping to have lunch at my favorite restaurant, Johnny’s Half Shell. Along the way I ended up on O Street, not far from the Dupont Circle Metro station. On the stretch between 20th and 21st Streets, I passed a row of brownstones. My memory has faded, but I recall bronze sculptures of the White Rabbit, Alice, the Mad Hatter, and the Cheshire Cat, surrounded by abundant greenery across the street fronts of four or five brownstones. Last week I learned that the place I passed 25 years ago was the O Museum in the Mansion, named for its street. Opened in 1980 by founder H.H. Leonards Spero, the mansion now also houses a boutique hotel with themed rooms. The museum brings together a rich history, from the lives of the rich and famous to courageous civil rights activists who changed the culture of our nation's capital. It's also called The Secret Door Museum. There are more than one hundred themed rooms, over eighty secret doors, and thousands of artifacts from art, music, sports, history, and American pop culture. I stopped at the case of signed guitars from Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan, and saw rooms full of folk and jazz memorabilia and items from the Beatles' early days. Nostalgia and history are everywhere, along with important civil rights era artifacts, including material about the inspired work of Rosa Parks and other civil rights mentors. The museum has a bar, modern restrooms, an elevator, and secret doors throughout. Reservations are recommended, but I walked in without waiting on a weekday in February 2026. Remarkably, most of the thousands of items are for sale. The docents make the rule clear: if you break it, you buy it. I found the staff friendly, knowledgeable, and exceptionally enthusiastic about their work. They also run limited-time themed events: the Secret Door Experience ($33), a Champagne Tour ($62.50), a Secret Portal Hunt & Tour ($45.95), Secret Gardens of Asia for cherry blossom season ($50), a Mother's Day Secret Door & Champagne Tour ($54.50), and a Night at the Museum overnight package ($550.77), along with many events celebrating Rosa Parks and other civil rights leaders. This might be one of the most curiosity-inspiring places anywhere. Good luck finding the secret doors!