The Old Stone House. The oldest building in Washington, D.C., on its original foundation — and it's only still standing because of a lie.
In seventeen sixty-five, a man named Christopher Layman bought this lot and started building a house out of Potomac bluestone. He died before he finished it. His wife Rachel completed the construction. Which — honestly — is a whole mood. "My husband started a house and died. Guess I'll finish it."
Rachel remarried and traded the property to a woman named Cassandra Chew. Cassandra expanded it from one story to three. When she died, it went to her daughter Mary. When Mary died, it went to her daughters and granddaughters. For a hundred and ten years — seventeen sixty-five to eighteen seventy-five — this building was owned exclusively by women. A chain of widows, passing it down.
In that time, the front room was a clock shop. Then a tailor's. Then a cobbler's. A painter's studio. In the nineteen thirties — reportedly a bordello. And by the fifties, i
t was a used car dealership. The Parkway Motor Company. The garden you see out back? That was a parking lot full of Chevrolets.
So how did a used car lot become a national landmark?
The lie.
Across the street, in seventeen ninety-one, there was a tavern run by a man named John Suter. George Washington met there to plan the layout of the federal city. That tavern is long gone. But Suter's son —
