The Octagon House

One of the oldest surviving houses in the capital, this early nineteenth-century Federal-style mansion sits near the White House on an unusually angled lot. Completed around 1801, it served as a temporary residence for President James Madison after the British burned the White House in 1814, and the Treaty of Ghent ending the War of 1812 was ratified in one of its rooms. Now a museum run by an architecture foundation, it preserves period interiors and a circular entrance hall.