A Portrait of Old George Town

Georgetown was a Maryland tobacco port on the Potomac, laid out in 1751, and it kept its own name and street names until Washington absorbed both in 1895. Writing as Grace Dunlop Ecker, the author set out to paint a portrait of the place rather than write another history, and her book moves street by street: below Bridge Street, along High Street, past the taverns, shops and schools, the college and the convent, out to Tudor Place, Evermay and Oak Hill. The Bealls and the Threlkelds turn up, and so do George Washington and L’Enfant, marking out the new Federal City. This was the town of her birth, where her parents, grandparents and great-grandparents had lived before her, and the affection shows in her patience with houses, gardens and old talk.