Edward Simon Lewis House
This house was one of the few buildings spared during the Southwest urban renewal efforts of the 1950s and 1960s.
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The Edward Simon Lewis House, probably erected in 1817, is an early nineteenth-century Federal-style house in Southwest. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, urban renewal efforts in Southwest DC led to the demolition of many of the buildings that once surrounded the Lewis House, including the houses attached to its east and west sides.
Traditionally, the house has been said to have been built by Washington Lewis, a nephew of George Washington, but deed searches and reviews of assessment records have yielded no evidence to verify that he ever owned it. Instead, city directories from 1822 and 1830 list Edward Simon Lewis, a clerk in the third auditor's office in the Navy Department, as the house's occupant.
DC Inventory: November 8, 1964 (Joint Committee on Landmarks)
National Register: July 23, 1973
