In 1884, Hay and Adams commissioned architect Henry Hobson Richardson to construct houses for them on Washington's Lafayette Square; these were completed by 1886. Hay's house, facing the White House and fronting on Sixteenth Street, was described even before completion as "the finest house in Washington". The price for the combined tract, purchased from William Wilson Corcoran, was $73,800, of which Adams paid a third for his lot. Hay budgeted the construction cost at $50,000; his ornate, mansion eventually cost over twice that. Despite their possession of two lavish houses, the Hays spent less than half the year in Washington and only a few weeks a year in Cleveland. They also spent time at The Fells, their summer residence in Newbury, New Hampshire. According to Gale, "for a full decade before his appointment in 1897 as ambassador to England, Hay was lazy and uncertain."