Designed by Horace Trumbauer. Commissioned in 1930 by Anna Dodge Dillman as a wedding gift for her daughter Delphine, who was one of two children from the marriage of Anna and Horace E Dodge, the deceased Detroit automobile mogul. Delphine married Raymond T. Baker, a successful Nevada banker. He had come to Washington during the Wilson administration to become director of the US Mint. On 13 acres, the 142' by 59' house has 30 rooms.An adaptation of the Parisian Hotel Rothelin-Charolais on the rue de Grenelle whose most illustrious resdent was Mademoiselle de Charolais, Princesse Louise-Anne de Bourdon-Conde. Surrounded by blooming azales and dogwoods one can look through a central opening in a bank of trees to an expansive view across the Potmac River valley to the distant Blue Ridge Mountains. Baker was once married to Margaret Emerson of the Brom-Seltzer fortune who he had met after her husband Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt died on the Lusitania. Delphine had been married to Jimmy Cromwell, son of Eva Stotesbury{Whitemarsh Hall}. One of Jimmy's other marriages was to Doris Duke. Jimmy's sister, Louise married Gen. Douglas MacArthur. Through this connection Mrs Stotesbury, whose husband was a senior partner in the merged firm of Drexel & Co. and JP Morgan, leased the property naming it MARLY after Louis XIV's favorite retreat. The Belgian goverment acquired the property in 1946.
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