of building a
House, or Houses thereon for the purpose of letting."[171] Later in that
same year he confides to Knox that his finances were not equal to
undertaking the projected building in Alexandria.

Ten years later the lot was still unimproved, when Halley, who owned
abutting property, was desirous of acquiring ten feet of Washington's
land for an alley. The deal did not go through and a year later William
Summers offered the owner three thousand dollars for the lot in
question, which was declined. President Washington wrote Tobias Lear,
his secretary, under date of March 21:

I have no wish to part with the lot unless I can do it upon
advantageous terms, and can dispose of the Money in a more productive
manner. I had thoughts of building on it, but this would be attended
with trouble, and perhaps a good deal of impositions; as it could not
be properly attended to in the execution of the work. And besides
workmens wages and materials are very high at this time.[172]

Shades of a later postwar era!

By June 1797, Washington had determined upon the subdivision as a
solution. This was time-honored practice locally. To John Fitzgerald, on
June 12 he wrote, "If you have had leizure to examine my unimproved lot
in Alexa, more attentively, and have digested any plan in your own mind
for an advantageous division of it, I would thank you for the result, as
I wish to fix on a Plan." A plot plan, docketed by Washington "my vacant
lot in Alex" has been found among his papers preserved in the Library of
Congress,[173] and is worthy of reproduction. That this plan was carried
out almost to the letter is revealed by the text of an advertisement
prepared in July to be set up in the gazettes:

The Subscriber having resolved to lay off the half acre lot which he
holds in the town of Alexandria (bounded by Prince and Pitt Streets)
into convenient building squares, gives this public notice thereof;
and of his intention to lease them forever, on ground Rent. Five and
a half feet extending from Prince Street, will be added to the alley
already left by Mr. Rickets, across to Mr. Halleys lot; and another
Alley of ten feet will be laid out about midway the lot from Pitt
Street until it intersect the former Alley. All the lots on Prince
Street will extend back to this Alley, and be about 83 or 4 feet in
depth. And the lots North thereof will extend from Pitt Street to the
first mention