Some very delightful parties were given there. Then candlelight was the
only illumination, and even the flowers used were redolent of colonial
days. The rooms were filled with furniture of the right type; and I
remember that the bedrooms even had the old washstands with holes in the
tops for bowls and pitchers which also were exactly "right" in their
period.

After that, Colonel Langfitt leased the house, and a very lovely wedding
took place out of doors under an enormous tree, when his daughter
married an officer of the United States Army.

In 1912 it was bought by John L. Newbold, a relative of the Lydia
Newbold of long ago. After a great deal of agitation on the subject of
cutting Q Street through, and putting a bridge across Rock Creek to
connect with the city, the District government in 1915 moved the old
house to its present location, for it had been sitting exactly in the
path of progress all these years, there being a George Town Ordinance
that a street could not be cut through without consent of the owner. I
only wish progress could have made a circle around the old mansion and
left it in its setting of stately, primeval trees.

Miss Loulie Rittenhouse, who had been born and reared there, worked
untiringly for the opening of the street, the bridge, and also for
Montrose Park, with the salvation of the glorious old oak trees it
contains.

Slowly, very, very slowly, old Bellevue was placed on huge rollers,
horses were attached to a windlass, and it almost took a microscope to
see the progress made day by day, but at last it reached its present
site, safe and sound. It was necessary to pull down and rebuild the
wings, as they had no cellars. Of course, the wall is also new.

It was leased during World War I to various people of importance in
Washington for war work, and finally, in 1928, bought by the National
Society of Colonial Dames of America. It has been handsomely and
suitably furnished as a house of the Federal period, and is open to the
public as a museum house. A beautiful house it is; the usual wide hall
through the middle, with vistas through the two big doors, four rooms
opening off it, the two back ones being rounded out at the northern
ends.

[Illustration: TUDOR PLACE]

Chapter XV

_Tudor Place and Congress (31st) Street_

Like the brightest jewel in its crown of old houses, Tudor Place, now
the home of Armistead Peter, junior, sits high and aloof on the heights
of Georgetown.