History of Tudor Place at 200

H-DC History of Tudor Place at 200

Discussion published by John DeFerrari on Tuesday, April 12, 2016 From the Streets of Washington blog. Full article with illustrations is at: http://www.streetsofwashington.com/2016/04/georgetowns-genteel-tudor-place.html

Tudor Place, the ancestral home of the Peter family, sits proudly on the heights above Georgetown, at 31st Street, just north of Q Street. One of the city's oldest residences, it is currently celebrating its 200th anniversary, a fitting moment to look back over the history of this unique homestead. More than just a late Federal-style architectural gem, the house and its elegant gardens reflect one man's determination to preserve the legacy of his extraordinary family for future generations.

Photo by the author.

Around the beginning of the 19th century, developers and wealthy landowners began building several "great houses" on the high ridge above the port of Georgetown. The ridge was a perfect spot, removed as it was from the busy waterfront and offering commanding views of the river and the new capital city emerging just to the east. The land had originally been part of a 795-acre patent given to Col. Ninian Beall (1625-1717) in 1703. Among the great country estates that would be built on this ridge, four remain, including the elegant Dumbarton House (c. 1799), which we previously profiled; the unrelated Dumbarton Oaks (c. 1800), now a sprawling research and museum complex owned by Harvard University; Evermay (1801), the estate of an eccentric merchant named Samuel Davidson (1747-1810); and Tudor Place, which wasn't finished until 1816.

Citation: John DeFerrari. History of Tudor Place at 200. H-DC. 04-12-2016. https://networks.h-net.org/node/28441/discussions/120046/history-tudor-place-200 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. 1 H-DC

Georgetown shipping merchant Francis Lowndes had started work on a house on the Tudor Place site in about 1795, but by the time he sold the property in 1805 he had built only two small structures, which were likely intended to be the final building's east and west wings. The new owners, Thomas Peter (1769-1834) and his wife Martha Custis Peter (1777-1854), had strong ties to Georgetown and George Washington. Thomas Peter was the son of Robert Peter, Georgetown's first mayor and a prosperous landholder. Martha was one of Martha Washington's granddaughters.

The young couple had previously lived in a townhouse on K Street just east of Rock Creek, where they had hosted George Washington on the last night that he stayed in Washington before his death in 1799. (Sadly, the historic Peter townhouse was torn down in 1961 so that K Street could be widened into a highway.) Once Martha Peter had secured her substantial inheritance from George Washington, the couple purchased the Lowndes property and began planning a great estate house to compete with the likes of Mount Vernon and Arlington House. They asked their good friend, Dr. William Thornton (1759-1828), the original architect of the U.S. Capitol, to design a large structure to connect and unify the two small existing buildings.

More at: http://www.streetsofwashington.com/2016/04/georgetowns-genteel-tudor-place.html