The Potts-Fitzhugh house at 601-607 Oronoco Street in Alexandria is one of the most interesting houses still standing in the area. Known most famously as the Boyhood Home of Robert E. Lee, the house’s history goes much deeper. The house was built in 1795 in what was then the Alexandria section of Washington D.C. for John Potts. Potts was the secretary of the Potomac Canal Company, which was attempting to link the Potomac and Ohio Rivers with a canal around Great Falls. Potts was an old friend of George Washington who visited the house often and sometimes even spent the night during the year Potts resided in the house.
Potts lived in the Oronoco Street house for only about a year, and then sold it to William Fitzhugh, a wealthy Virginia tobacco planter and racehorse breeder who was looking for a city home. Fitshugh owned beautiful Chatham Manor in Fredericksburg which was right down the road from Ferry Farm, the boyhood home of George Washington. The two had served together in the Virginia House of Burgesses before the Revolution, and remained friends. In fact, Washington dined with Fitzhugh at this house on Oronoco Street just one month before he died, on his last visit to Alexandria. Fitzhugh was married to Ann Randolph and the couple had three children. One of their children, Mary Lee Fitzhugh, would grow up to marry George Washington Parke Custis, a grandchild of Martha Washington from her first marriage. The wedding took place in the parlor on Oronoco Street. George and Mary Lee had one daughter, Mary Anne Randolph Custis, who would grow up to marry Robert E. Lee in 1831, two years after he graduated from West Point. During the Civil War, the Lees would take refuge on the Fitzhughs’ country estate, Ravensworth, which they built after selling Chatham. When William Fitzhugh died in 1809, his city home on Oronoco Street passed to his son, also named William, who would rent it to the house’s most famous occupants: Henry “Light Horse Harry” Lee and his family which included then five-year-old Robert E. Lee.
Robert E. Lee was born in Stratford, Virginia in 1807, but he moved with his family to Washington D.C. in 1810, when he was just 3 years old, and lived at 611 Cameron Street in the Alexandria section. In 1812, they moved to this house on Oronoco Street where they lived for the next four years. The Lees would move to 407 N. Washington St. in 1816 but returned to the house on Oronoco Street in 1820. On October 14th, 1824, the Marquis de Lafayette was in Washington and wanted to visit his old Revolutionary War friend “Light Horse Harry” Lee’s widow and children,so he stopped by their home on Oronoco Street. Lafayette met 17 year-old Robert and no doubt told him of his father’s heroism in the Revolution. Robert lived on Oronoco St. until he departed for West Point in 1825 on the recommendation of William Fitzhugh the younger. When Robert left, his mother and two sisters moved across the river to Georgetown, but the house on Oronoco Street would be inhabited by other members of the Lee family for the next 62 years until it was sold to the Burson family in 1887. During the Lee family’s tenure there, Alexandria was retroceded to Virginia. One can only speculate on the fate of Robert E. Lee and the nation had his boyhood home remained a part of Washington D.C.
In 1932, the house was bought by Royd R. Sayers of the Bureau of Mines. It had been unoccupied for several years and had fallen into a state of disrepair. Sayers renovated and updated the house and lived there for several years.
In 1941, the Reverend Doctor Joseph B. Code purchased the house on Oronoco Street from the Sayers family. Code was the chaplain of the Austrian House of Hapsburg and came to the United States with the Archduke Otto von Hapsburg when the Archduke was exiled in Washington D.C. during World War II. When Code died in 1942, the house was purchased by Ada and Archibald MacLeish. Archibald was a three time Pulitzer Prize winning poet, was then serving as the 9th Librarian of Congress and would later serve as the Assistant Secretary of State. His wife, Ada, was a concert singer who, during World War II, was appointed National Director of the Camp and Hospital Council Service of the American Red Cross. When the MacLeishes’ daughter, Mimi, was married in the house, wedding guests included a Supreme Court Justice, the Earl of Halifax and future presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson. Secretary of State Dean Acheson was also in attendance and brought a Revolutionary War sword with which to cut the wedding cake.
Josephine Underwood Goodale lived in the house in the late 1940s, and entertained First Lady Bess Truman on Oronoco Street. In 1962, she sold the house to Henry Koch who then sold it, in 1967, to Stonewall Jackson Memorial Inc. which ran the house as a museum for many years. The upkeep on the house was costly for the museum, and the by-then-renamed Lee-Jackson Foundation sold the house in 2000 as a private home. The 8,145 square foot, 6 bedroom historic home on Oronoco Street recently sold for $4.7 million.
The Potts-Fitzhugh House (Lee’s Boyhood Home) can be found at 601-607 Oronoco St. in Alexandria, Virginia (once a part of Washington D.C.). It is a private home and is not open to the public.
D.C.’s Oldest Homes was intended to be a single post with an overview of the history of some of the beautiful buildings from the city’s first decade and before. The more I looked at the history of each property, though, the further down the rabbit hole I went. I hope you enjoy this series of brief posts looking at each property individually. All color photos are available for sale and licensing.