Washington’s Other Hometown
By • February 10, 2026 0 364
If George Washington were to reappear in the nation’s capital during the nation’s 250th anniversary, he would barely comprehend the Town of George, let alone the rest of the city he helped to create.
He would recognize “presidential confidential agent” Benjamin Stoddert’s Halcyon House on Prospect Street. Along Bridge Street (M Street), the City Tavern and the Forrest-Marbury House — the Embassy of Ukraine since the 1990s — would be familiar. He’d be pleased, perhaps, to learn that the Fountain Inn, aka Suter’s Tavern, on High Street (Wisconsin Avenue) was reborn in the 21st century.
George Washington and Pierre L’Enfant. Courtesy Architect of the Capitol.
The old general would smile upon viewing Tudor Place, the home of Thomas Peter and Martha Parke Custis Peter, a granddaughter of Martha Washington. Now a museum with gardens, the site interprets six generations of the family along with their laborers, enslaved and free. The exhibition “Founding Fortunes: The Estate Sale of Martha Washington” opens today.
Indeed, here and across these United States, Washington is still a leading man.
Christy Pichichero, president of Tudor Place’s board of trustees, tells The Georgetowner: “George Washington was an impressive, complex and paradoxical man. He was born into wealth and privilege, but dutifully suffered privation, disease and despair while risking life and limb throughout his long military career.
“He was a Freemason and man of Enlightenment who advocated for religious toleration, civic virtue, strong morals and, above all, liberty. Yet he was an eager, self-interested businessman who demonstrated no qualms about driving Indigenous tribes out of their native lands or deceiving military veterans to expand his landholdings. He enslaved scores of people and drew great profits from their labor, though he felt increasing regret and willed their freedom upon Martha Washington’s death.”
Traveling from his beloved Mount Vernon estate and adopted town of Alexandria, Virginia, Washington often came to nearby Georgetown for business. His carriage route to New York City for the first presidential inauguration in 1789 took him along our own 34th Street from the ferry. In 1797, he visited Georgetown College, where his grandnephews had been students, and spoke from the steps of Old North (only two years old at the time).
However, it was his activities to forge the new capital and maintain the unity of the young republic that merit the most notice.
George Washington at Old North. Courtesy Georgetown University.
President Washington signed the Residence Act into law in 1790, establishing the permanent U.S. capital on the Potomac River in 10 years’ time. He himself took control of the planning and building with Pierre Charles L’Enfant, who had served on Washington’s staff at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.
Washington City — with Georgetown in Maryland and Alexandria in Virginia — became part of the 10-mile-square federal district. By 1791, 19 original landowners made deals with Washington at Suter’s Tavern and the Forrest-Marbury House to sell to the federal government.
The old surveyor died in 1799, just months before the federal government’s official relocation from Philadelphia. His widow carried on his home and legacy.
“He married an amazing woman in Martha and was a loving father to his stepchildren and adopted step-grandchildren (he never had biological children), though he sacrificed domestic life at Mount Vernon to be a father of this nation,” Pichichero concludes. “George Washington’s life not only tells the story of the man and his epoch, but the story of America and our deeply rooted paradoxes that continue to this day.”
Happy birthday, Mr. President. We have a few new restaurants to show you.
