Other Discoveries
Washington, D.C. plat (between F and G and 17th and 18th Sts., Northwest), 1797 (detail)
Among the unexpected items in the attic papers is this 1790s plan of a block in the newly designed national capital, Washington, D.C. The land it depicts lay about 500 feet west of the White House, which was still only half built.
The document was found among letters written between 1796 and 1805 by Joel Brown, a Queen Anne’s County farmer’s son who had crossed the Chesapeake to seek his fortune as a shopkeeper. In correspondence with his brother back on the Eastern Shore, Brown described the city under construction, bustling with well-diggers, brickmakers, and real estate speculators.
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