Bella Vista

The Bonapartes lived here from May to December each year - except for July and August when they summered at the fashionable Algonquin Hotel in St. Andrews, New Brunswick - and were otherwise found at their townhouse in Baltimore, 601-603 Park Avenue. Bonaparte had a distinct mistrust of technology and so the house (and presumably his townhouse too) was not electrified and neither did he own an automobile. During the months that he lived here he continued to make the journey to-and-from the office every day in one of his carriages pulled by whichever of the dozen horses he kept here.

The Baltimore County Union gave a description of the house in an article in 1904: "Mr. Bonaparte’s house is built of Virginia shingles and is in Colonial Style, with white porches in circular form nearly the entire distance around it. Hand carving is a feature of the scroll and ornamental work. A great attraction of the interior is the reception hall, which runs the entire width of the house from north to south... The reception hall is furnished with sofas and divans upholstered in tapestry, and there are easy chairs, standing lamps, a piano and an old fashioned spinning wheel, besides several coffee tables...".

Despite his distinguished lineage, Bonaparte cared nothing for his empirical family. It was said he did not like the French and was not proud of his French ancestry. He was, "fond of the classics and fond of horses, fond of jokes and not fond of bosses". Yet, he enjoyed a lifelong warm friendship with Theodore Roosevelt in whose cabinet he served.

Bonaparte died in 1921 and seventeen days later his widow left Bella Vista to travel. On returning to Baltimore, she bought a smaller suburban home at 227 Chancery Street in Guilford where she lived until her death in Washington D.C. in 1924. Their townhouse on Park Avenue was demolished soon afterwards - when a brass box two feet square filled with jewellery intended for his grandmother was discovered - and in 1933 a fire laid waste to their beloved Bella Vista. It has since been replaced by a white-columned house, but it is not to be mistaken for the house where the last Bonaparte in Baltimore lived.