Tudor Place. One family lived in this house for a hundred and seventy-eight years. Six generations. Eighteen oh five to nineteen eighty-three. The woman who built it was Martha Washington's granddaughter.
Martha Parke Custis married Thomas Peter on January sixth, seventeen ninety-five — the same day and month that George and Martha Washington had married. She was seventeen. George Washington left her an inheritance. She used eight thousand dollars of it to buy this lot — the highest point in Georgetown — with a view of the Potomac she'd grown up looking at from the other side, at Mount Vernon.
The architect was William Thornton. You may know his other building — the United States Capitol. Thornton was not a trained architect. He was a doctor from the British Virgin Islands who entered the Capitol design competition as a hobby. His submission arrived months after the deadline. They picked it anyway.
Thornton had opinions about everything. He co-designed a paddle-wheel steamboat. He r
an the Patent Office. He proposed building a steam-powered speaking organ that could "preach to the whole city." And when George Washington died on December fourteenth, seventeen ninety-nine — Thornton showed up at Mount Vernon and proposed to bring him back to life. The plan involved thawing the body in cold water, inflating the lungs through the trachea, and transfusing blood from a lamb.
The f
