The Carlyle House and the 18th-Century Site

Completed in 1753, the Carlyle House was the residence of John Carlyle, a prosperous merchant, landowner, and one of 18th-century Alexandria's leading citizens. An early engraving published in Harper's New Monthly in 1890 depicted the house at an earlier time, with simple mid-18th-century landscaping, large pointed trees such as Lombardy poplars or cedars, and little shrubbery, especially near the foundation. The outbuilding to the right was Carlyle's kitchen, kept separate from the main house in the southern colonies to remove smoke, heat, and cooking odors and to reduce the danger of fire; it stood approximately where the Law Building is today. The outbuilding to the left was Carlyle's office and counting room for his extensive mercantile operations, and attached to its left were a store and warehouse along Fairfax Street approximately where the 1807 Bank of Alexandria now stands. Other outbuildings behind the Bank of Alexandria included a stable, coach house, necessary, smokehouse, dairy, and storage sheds, with their relative locations shown in a plan drawn from a 1796 insurance policy.

Alexandria, Virginia · United States