Decatur House

Facing Lafayette Square near the White House, this Federal-style townhouse was completed in 1818 for naval hero Stephen Decatur and designed by Benjamin Latrobe. Decatur lived here only briefly before dying in a duel, and the house later served a succession of statesmen and diplomats. Today it operates as a museum of nineteenth-century city life, and its preserved outbuildings include quarters once used by enslaved and domestic workers, a rare urban look at that history.