The Enduring Law House
, built in ,include an important historic building as their community center: the Thomas Law House. The Federal style house was design ed by William Lovering in for businessman Th omas Law and his bride Eliza Parke Custis,granddaughterof Martha Washington. Early on it was known as Hon eymoon House.”Originally the house stood at the foot of Sixth Street overlooking the Potomac. Since then, time and engineers have changed the shoreline, so the house now sits farther from the water. It is one of very few to survive the s urban renewal. After the Laws’time,the area around the house grew commercial. During the Civil War the house became the Mt.Vernon Hotel,where guests saw Union troops embarking for the South from the busy Sixth Street wharf. They also witnessed the arrival of stunning numbers of wounded soldiers. Quite often,”recorded poet Walt Whitman,“they arrive[d] at the rate of , a day.”Here President Lincoln greeted Union reinforcements arriving to defend the city’s Fort Stevens from Confederate attack in .At the war’s end,Washington’s own regiment of the U.S. Colored Troops march ed triumphantly up Seventh Street to the cheers of well-wishers. Around the Law House became the Washington Sanitarium’s Mission Hospital,ministering to the area’s working class and poor,black and white. In Dr. Henry G. Hadley purchasedthe house to opera te as a clinic. According to So ut hwester Phyllis Martin, he “was a family doctor to all of the people of Southwest,”who frequently neglected to take payment for his services. In Hadl ey built Hadley Memorial Hospital in far Southwest, named to honor his mother.The Hadley Clinic closed in during urban renewal.
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