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North Fairfax Street

The Carlyle House was completed in 1753 by John Carlyle Person John Carlyle b. 1720 · d. 1780 Scottish-born merchant, one of the founding trustees of Alexandria in 1749, and builder of the stone Carlyle House at the head of what is now Fairfax Street. Carlyle was a … , one of the eleven founding trustees of Alexandria, on a block-long lot fronting the Potomac ^[1] Source 1 Miller, Artisans and Merchants, 1991 Book . Its cut-stone masonry and two-story symmetrical plan were exceptional for the Virginia tidewater in the mid-eighteenth century, where brick was the usual prestige material.

In April 1755, General Edward Braddock made the house his headquarters while meeting with the royal governors of Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, and Massachusetts to plan the opening campaign of the French and Indian War ^[2] Source 2 Powell, History of Old Alexandria, 1928 Book . The governors met in the first-floor parlor to apportion colonial contributions to the expedition, which would end with Braddock’s defeat and death at the Monongahela that July.

Carlyle held enslaved persons in the household throughout his residence; surviving estate inventories list them by first name ^[3] Source 3 HABS Alexandria survey Government record . The building passed through a succession of owners after the Carlyle family sold it, was obscured by a Victorian-era hotel built around it in 1848, and was restored beginning in 1970 by the Northern Virginia Regional Park Authority. It is now operated as a house museum.