Monday, February 08, 2016

Then & Now: Where Lincoln assassination conspirators met


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In 1864-65, John Wilkes Booth and his cohorts allegedly cooked up plots to assassinate Abraham Lincoln at this Washington house. Today, the old boarding house once owned by Booth confidant Mary Surratt is used for another kind of cooking — it's an Asian restaurant called Wok & Roll that serves dynamite roll for $15.25, Cantonese roast duck for $41.95, Mai Tais for $10.50 and large glasses of warm sake for $13.95. (Here's their full menu.)
Mary Surratt
Alterations have significantly changed the 3 1/2-story building at 604 H Street NW since the 19th century. What was a doorway 151 years ago is now a second-floor window and a first-floor window is now an entrance. Of course, Mrs. Surratt probably wouldn't recognize the interior, which features a karaoke lounge with a  touch-screen search monitor that can play more than 150,000 songs.

Despite her family's hope that she be spared by President Andrew Johnson, the United States hanged Surratt  on July 7, 1865, for her role in the conspiracy to assassinate Lincoln. Johnson famously called the boarding house "the nest in which the egg was hatched." Surratt, 42, became the first woman executed by the U.S. government.

"Woman as she was, she knew her business well; sick as she was, she had strength sufficient for her fearful purpose, and stern as the sentence was, its justice was absolute, its execution certain," the New York Times reported the day the U.S. hanged Surratt. "We have heard many express the desire that the woman's life might be spared and its weary hours passed in the quiet of the prison, but no one who knew the President and his unmoveable nature supposed for an instant that the sentence would be changed in jot or tittle."

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4 comments:

  1. Jim A.1:18 PM

    I really enjoy your "then and now" photos. I've walked past the Surratt house a number of times without realizing its significance.

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    1. John Banks7:02 PM

      thanks for the kind words.... i have driven past it several times and not know the significance either...

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  2. RichardS11:58 AM

    I ate there just because I wanted to see inside! Good food, but I kept imagining Wilkes Booth coming through the door as I ate my crab rangoon...

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  3. Anonymous12:28 AM

    history buff:1)R T Lincoln above signature lucy Lambert Hale 2)Rumors RTL go National Hotel John Parker Hale wife daughters stay at same place as John Wilkes Booth? 3)Harlan Residence 304 H Street D.C. 4)surratt board house 604 H street . 5.)Grant/Julia Grant 205 I Street Near H street D C georgetown (only few blocks away) 6.)Ulysses Grant stay Willard Hotel 1st ? 7.)National Hotel 555 Pennsylvania Ave 8} Willard Hotel 1401 Pennsylvania ave Abe stay here 1st came d c. 9.) Kirkwood Hotel 12/Pennsylvania avenue.(andrew johnson)? 10.)Edwin Stanton’s home was located near Franklin Square, a short walk from the White House 1325 K Street NW. 11) Edwin Stanton and Andrew Johnson control Lincoln Conspiracy trial remenber Johnson called her boarding house “the nest that hatched the egg.” but Johnson pardon Davis ,Dr Samuel Mudd ETC?12.)Booth rode on horseback down to Pennsylvania Avenue and 11 th Street to the Navy Yard Bridge. night of April 14, 1865..13) conspirators at hotels/Restaurants/Saloons ( Booth and other conspirators at Gautier's Restaurant on Pennsylvania Avenue )David Herold parents Adam and Mary Porter Herold. family lived home at 636 Eighth Street near the Washington Navy Yard.

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