The Lockkeeper's House is the oldest building on the

National Mall The National Mall is a Landscape architecture, landscaped park near the Downtown, Washington, D.C., downtown area of Washington, D.C., the capital city of the United States. It contains and borders a number of museums of the Smithsonian Institu ...

Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from Virginia, and shares land borders with ...

It was built in 1837 at what is now the southwest corner of 17th Street, NW and

Constitution Avenue Constitution Avenue is a major east–west street in the Northwest, Washington, D.C., northwest and Northeast, Washington, D.C., northeast quadrants of the city of Washington, D.C., in the United States. It was originally known as B Street, and ...

, NW, near

Constitution Gardens Constitution Gardens is a park area in Washington, D.C., United States, located within the boundaries of the National Mall. The park is bounded on the west by the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, on the east by 17th St NW, on the north by Constituti ...

. The building dates to a period when the south end of 17th Street, NW was a wharf and Constitution Avenue, NW was the location of a section of the

Washington City Canal The Washington City Canal was a canal in Washington, D.C., that operated from 1815 until the mid-1850s. The canal connected the Anacostia River, termed the "Eastern Branch" at that time, to Tiber Creek, the Potomac River, and later the Chesapeak ...

, which connected the Potomac and

Anacostia Anacostia is a historic neighborhood in Southeast (Washington, D.C.), Southeast Washington, D.C. Its downtown is located at the intersection of Marion Barry Avenue (formerly Good Hope Road) SE and the neighborhood contains commercial and gover ...

rivers. An eastward extension of the

Chesapeake and Ohio Canal The Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, abbreviated as the C&O Canal and occasionally called the Grand Old Ditch, operated from 1831 until 1924 along the Potomac River between Washington, D.C., and Cumberland, Maryland. It replaced the Patowmack Canal ...

(C&O Canal) met the Potomac River and the Washington City Canal at a

canal lock A lock is a device used for raising and lowering boats, ships and other watercraft between stretches of water of different levels on river and canal waterways. The distinguishing feature of a lock is a chamber in a permanently fixed position i ...

. The 350 square foot house served the canal

lock keeper A lock keeper, lock tender, or lock operator looks after a canal or river lock, operating it and if necessary maintaining it or organizing its maintenance. Traditionally, lock keepers lived on-site, often in small purpose-built cottages. A lock ke ...

, who collected tolls, recorded commerce, maintained the canal and managed traffic. It was listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...

in 1973.

History

The C & O Canal was extended between 1832 and 1833, to connect to the Washington City Canal. The lockkeeper's house was built in 1837 for toll collecting and record keeping, only to be abandoned in 1855 with the demise of the canal 30 years after its construction — which by then had ceded transportation of heavy goods to the nascent railroads and deteriorated into an open sewer. In disrepair, the building became a squatters' tenement and in 1903 was partially renovated as a headquarters for the

United States Park Police The United States Park Police (USPP) is the oldest uniformed federal law enforcement agency in the United States. It functions as a full-service law enforcement agency with responsibilities and jurisdiction in those National Park Service areas ...

, with a holding cell. The house was relocated west in 1915 and aligned in its original east-west orientation parallel to B Street, NW (now Constitution Avenue, NW), which had been constructed above former sections of the Washington Canal and of the C&O Canal Extension after the covering of the two canals. Changes made to the structure at the time included removal of the original brick chimneys and their replacement with shorter stone chimneys. On July 4, 1928, the Office of Public Buildings and Public Parks installed a historical plaque on the building's exterior. In 1940, the first floor of the building was used as rest rooms then used as storage. It ultimately sat boarded up for forty years. As the intersection grew, street and sidewalk traffic encroached increasingly on the house until the traffic became adjacent to the house. In October 2017, a

National Park Service The National Park Service (NPS) is an List of federal agencies in the United States, agency of the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government, within the US Department of the Interior. The service manages all List ...

(NPS) contractor moved the building to the south and to the west (away from Constitution Avenue, NW, and 17th Street, NW) while retaining the structure's east-west orientation. The NPS restored the building's exterior to its pre-1915 modifications and replaced the structure's brick chimneys, thus restoring the building to its original 1800s appearance. The building reopened temporarily in late August 2018 and permanently on September 13 of that year. The house now serves in its new location as an NPS education center as part of the first phase of a renovation of

Pictures

1900s

File:Lock Keeper's House, Seventeenth Street & Constitution Avenue 025997pv.jpg, File:Lock Keeper's House, Seventeenth Street & Constitution Avenue 311937pv.jpg, File:Exterior of Lock Keeper's House 38804u.tif, File:Lock Keeper's House, Seventeenth Street & Constitution Avenue 025996pv.jpg,

2000s

File:Lockkeeper's House, DC.jpg, File:Lock Keeper's House plaque by Matthew Bisanz.JPG, File:LockKeeper'sHouse.jpg, File:LKDC2.JPG, File:Lockkeeper's House (8214d6a2-ff79-43b6-92fd-dc2238206131).jpg,

References

External links

On National Park Service's websiteOn Trust for the National Mall website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lockkeeper's House, C and O Canal Extension Buildings and structures on the National Register of Historic Places in Washington, D.C. Relocated buildings and structures in Washington, D.C. National Mall