Old Stone House

The Old Stone House in Georgetown is a chink in the curtain of modernity through which our past shines and illuminates our present. Singularly subdued amidst the commercialized corridor of Georgetown's M Street, the Old Stone House's soft gray façade and humble stature is incongruous with the colorfully pompous stores that surround it. Despite this apparent dissonance, this quiet structure's history describes centuries of development in Washington, DC. As one of the oldest buildings in our nation's capital, it has evolved with the changing needs of the city many times throughout its duration.

Gentle sunlight filters in through the rippled windowpanes and falls lazily across the worn quilt in the children's bedroom under the eaves. This room, with pickup sticks and cornhusk dolls strewn about as if the family of 1765 had just left moments before, hosts the home's only closet. Before the Revolutionary War, the British Crown considered closets to be rooms and taxed them as such, making them a scarce feature of most residences until America won her independence. A venerable grandfather clock, made in the front room of the Old Stone House when it was a clock shop in the early 1800s, stands at attention in the dining room, while cabinets and floor boards slant askew, bowed by the passage of time.

Nobody of repute ever inhabited the Old Stone House, and it was merely the strength of a false legend that it had once been headquarters for both George Washington and Pierre L'Enfant, who planned the District of Columbia, that allowed the building to endure. When the federal government bought the property in 1953, it was the rustic venue for the Parkway Motor Company, a used car dealership. A parking lot scattered with second-hand automobiles has now been converted to a verdant English garden open daily to the public. After wandering through a portrait of the past and browsing the Eastern National Bookstore on the first floor, pause outside the door in the scented shadow of magnolia trees to ease your transition to the present.

- Tess Hart