The reason for a lockkeeper's house........


Someone was going to have to collect the tolls and keep the records, so a Lockkeeper's House was built at 17th and Constitution. Owned today by the National Park Service, the Lockkeeper's House is one of the last reminders that a canal ever flowed through DC. A small federal style house built of fieldstone and measuring 30 feet wide and 18 feet deep, the Lockkeeper's House originally sat 40 feet west and 10 feet north of its current location, but was moved in the 1930′s to widen 17th Street.