From Naval History & Heritage Command photo NH 48110.

Eugene H. C. Leutze as Captain, USN, ca. 1901–07.

His early career brought Leutze various surveying assignments, especially in Central America. In 1897, as commanding officer of Alert, he helped promote the peace when representatives from Costa Rica and Nicaragua met and signed a treaty of peace aboard his ship. As captain of Monterey, he sailed to reinforce Dewey’s fleet at Manila, and was present when the city capitulated.

A fine administrator, he was promoted to rear admiral in 1907 while Superintendent of the Naval Gun Factory and, from 1905 to 1910, Commandant of the Navy Yard, Washington, D.C. Admiral Leutze ended his active career as Commandant of both the 3rd Naval District and the New York Navy Yard on 6 June 1912. He died at Brooklyn Naval Hospital 1 September 1931.

Leutze Park, at the Washington Navy Yard between the Naval Historical Center at Building 57 and Tingey House, the residence of the Chief of Naval Operations, is named for RAdm. Leutze (see photograph, above). It is the parade ground for official change-of-command and retirement ceremonies. An anchor from USS Enterprise (CV 6), bronze cannon and other ordnance dating from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries, some captured by U.S. forces in the Barbary Wars, the Civil War, and the Spanish American War, rim the park.