Old Stone House

The Old Stone House is believed to be the oldest pre-Revolutionary building in Washington, D.C. The house stands on what was called Bridge Street (now M Street, N.W.) in George Town, which was laid out in 1752. Bridge Street was a main thoroughfare for road traffic from the Western frontier and paralleled the canal, which after 1833 was heavily used for cargo traffic. The house was to be built on Lot 3, land first sold to John Clagett, one of George Town's Commissioners. In 1764, Christopher Layman, a cabinetmaker and his family purchased Lot 3 and built the old Stone House for use both as a home and a shop. Layman died in 1765 and the house was sold to Cassandra Chew, who in 1767 added a wing to the rear of the house. Cassandra and her two daughters lived in the house until 1808 when it became the home of the eldest daughter Mary, and her husband Richard Smith. From 1826, according to the will of Mary, who had married twice, the house was divided among her several heirs and was continually used as a residence until 1953 when it was purchased for $90,000 by the U.S. Government. Among the inhabitants of the old Stone House were John Suter, Jr., Mary Smith's son-in-law, who used the ground floor of the building as a watchmaker's shop during Mary's residency there.

There have been various attempts over the years to prove that the Stone House was either George Washington's Engineering Headquarters and/or Suters Tavern, but neither of these ideas was ever substantiated, although, for a
on the house designated it as Washington's headquarters.

The significance of the old Stone House lies in its mixed residential-commercial use during the last quarter of the 18th Century as a reflection of the social, cultural, and economic life of George Town, and as an example of pre-Revolutionary American architecture.