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North Washington Street
Late-Georgian 1797 townhouse at the corner of North Washington and Queen built by merchant John Wise. Charles Lee, U.S. Attorney General and brother of Light-Horse Harry, lived here as a tenant; Benjamin Hallowell ran a school out of it from 1826; St. Agnes Episcopal School for Girls opened here in 1924; the Alexandria Library Association restored it in the 1970s as a research library. NRHP 1976.
- 1797
- Late Georgian
- Extant
- National Register of Historic PlacesOld and Historic Alexandria District
Place narrative
Lloyd House — also called the Wise–Hooe–Lloyd House for its three principal nineteenth-century owners — was built between 1796 and 1797 by John Wise, the merchant and tavernkeeper who already owned the neighboring City Hotel (later the Bank of Alexandria) and Wise’s Tavern, where George Washington was first toasted as President-elect in April 1789 [1] City of Alexandria — Lloyd House History Website .
Wise lived at the corner of North Washington and Queen only briefly. By 1810 he had sold the house to Jacob Hoffman, who would later serve as mayor of Alexandria, and Hoffman in turn sold to James Hooe in 1824 for $13,000 [2] Wikipedia, Lloyd House (Alexandria, Virginia) Website . Among the early tenants was Charles Lee (U.S. Attorney General) Charles Lee (U.S. Attorney General) b. 1758 · d. 1815 United States Attorney General (1795-1801) under presidents Washington and Adams; brother of and . Practiced law in Alexandria; married Anne Lee, daughter of Declaration signer . , younger brother of Henry "Light-Horse Harry" Lee III Henry "Light-Horse Harry" Lee III b. 1756 · d. 1818 Continental Army cavalry officer, ninth governor of Virginia, and father of . Sold the Oronoco Street property in 1784 to his cousin that became the . and U.S. Attorney General under presidents Washington and Adams.
A schoolhouse in 1826 — and again in 1924
After Hooe’s death in 1826 his widow rented the house to Benjamin Hallowell, the Quaker schoolmaster, who used the building as his Alexandria boarding school for boys. Hallowell’s most famous pupil was Robert Edward Lee, who boarded with him for several months in 1825 to prepare for entrance to West Point. The Hooe widow died in 1831; the house then passed to John Lloyd, the family that gave the building its enduring name.
A century later — in 1924 — Lloyd House opened a second life as a school. St. Agnes School (a.k.a. St. Agnes Episcopal School for Girls), founded that year to serve Alexandria families who lacked a private-school option, took its first 45 pupils inside the Federal-period rooms with Miss Mary Josephine White as principal. St. Agnes outgrew Lloyd House by 1932 and relocated, but the founding chapter remained part of the institutional memory long after the school merged with St. Stephen’s in 1991 to form 1000 Saint Stephens Road 1000 Saint Stephens Road Upper School (grades 9–12) of St. Stephen's & St. Agnes School, occupying the Saint Stephens Road campus opened in January 1957 by St. Stephen's School for Boys. In 1961 the school … .
The library era
The house was acquired by the City of Alexandria and restored in the 1970s by the Alexandria Library Association Alexandria Library Association founded 1937 The private nonprofit operating Alexandria's first free public library, which opened on Queen Street in 1937. The association's segregation policy excluding Black patrons was the … as a local-history research library — a third life as a place of study. NRHP listed in 1976. It remains a city-owned historic site.
Timeline
No occupancies or events recorded yet for this place. Contribute a record →
The building
- Late Georgian
No images yet — contribute a photo.
Nearby in time

APK · via Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0 Jones Point Park
Frame lighthouse built 1855 at the south boundary stone of the original District of Columbia; one of the few surviving Potomac River inland …

Ser Amantio di Nicolao · via Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 3.0 2823 King Street
Garden cemetery established 1856 on the western edge of Alexandria; among its interments are several mayors and Confederate veterans. …

Bruce Andersen from Washington, DC · via Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 2.0 King Street
Fourth of the original DC southwestern boundary stones; the marker straddles the Alexandria-Arlington line. NRHP-listed 1991.

Beyond My Ken · via Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0 110 Callahan Drive
1905 railway terminal at the foot of King Street, currently serving Amtrak, VRE, and Washington Metro Blue/Yellow lines. NRHP-listed 2013.
Nearby in space

Placeholder illustration of Alexandria Library 1939. Seed placeholder — KingSt.com, 2026. To be replaced with archival photograph. 717 Queen Street
Alexandria's first free public library, opened on Queen Street in 1937, and site of a sit-in on August 21, 1939 that is among the earliest …

Beyond My Ken · via Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0 118 North Washington Street
Alexandria's Georgian-style Episcopal parish church, consecrated in 1773; pew owners included George Washington and, decades later, the Lee …

APK · via Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0 523 Queen Street
Two-story brick "spite house" 7 feet 6 inches wide, infilling the alley between 521 and 525 Queen Street. Built in 1830 by to block alley …

Beyond My Ken · via Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0 206 North Pitt Street
Three brick rowhouses built ca. 1849 by Moses Hepburn, a free Black property owner and one of antebellum Alexandria's wealthiest African …
Now
No current occupant on file. Are you, or someone you know, the present occupant? Claim this place to add operating hours, a current photo, and a short note.
Commonwealth Avenue
Named for The Commonwealth of Virginia, c. 1894.
Interpretive signs nearby
The City of Alexandria has installed 3 historical interpretive signs within walking distance of this place. Each links to the actual sign image on alexandriava.gov.
300 N Washington St
Site of the First Synagogue of Beth El Hebrew Congregation
206 N Washington St
replacing the current sign by August 1, 2024
Sources
- 1.
City of Alexandria, "Lloyd House History," alexandriava.gov, accessed 2026.
Website https://www.alexandriava.gov/historic-sites/lloyd-house-history →
- 2.
Wikipedia, "Lloyd House (Alexandria, Virginia)," accessed 2026.
Website https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lloyd_House_(Alexandria,_Virginia) →
See something wrong?
Every correction is logged dated to this page. Family history, old photographs, or a citation we missed — everything goes into the file.
![Old Loyd [i.e. Lloyd] House, Alexandria, Va.](/images/gtdju7ejdnwoq7p/old_loyd_i_e_lloyd_house_alexandria_va_2rutnb54Yg._hu_dff9ce9c6762818.jpg)