In 1912 it was bought by John L. Newbold, a relative of the Lydia Newbold of long ago. After a great deal of agitation on the subject of cutting Q Street through, and putting a bridge across Rock Creek to connect with the city, the District government in 1915 moved the old house to its present location, for it had been sitting exactly in the path of progress all these years, there being a George Town Ordinance that a street could not be cut through without consent of the owner. I only wish progress could have made a circle around the old mansion and left it in its setting of stately, primeval trees. Miss Loulie Rittenhouse, who had been born and reared there, worked untiringly for the opening of the street, the bridge, and also for Montrose Park, with the salvation of the glorious old oak trees it contains. Slowly, very, very slowly, old Bellevue was placed on huge rollers, horses were attached to a windlass, and it almost took a microscope to see the progress made day by day, but at last it reached its present site, safe and sound. It was necessary to pull down and rebuild the wings, as they had no cellars. Of course, the wall is also new. It was leased during World War I to various people of importance in Washington for war work, and finally, in 1928, bought by the National Society of Colonial Dames of America. It has been handsomely and suitably furnished as a house of the Federal period, and is open to the public as a museum house. A beautiful house it is; the usual wide hall through the middle, with vistas through the two big doors, four rooms opening off it, the two back ones being rounded out at the northern ends. [Illustration: TUDOR PLACE] Chapter XV _Tudor Place and Congress (31st) Street_ Like the brightest jewel in its crown of old houses, Tudor Place, now the home of Armistead Peter, junior, sits high and aloof on the heights of Georgetown. Its southern front, shown here, is the one most familiar to everyone, and it is the view that I looked out on every day of my life for more than a score of years from my father's house on Stoddert (Q) Street. As Mrs. Beverley Kennon, its owner during my youth, was my cousin and had her motherless grandchildren living with her, some of my earliest recollections are of running round and round the old circle of box in front of the north entrance, playing "colors." I never, to this day, smell box that I am not back at Tudor Place and see the cobwebs in the old bushes bright with raindrops, as box, of course, is really fragrant only after rain. Also there were lovely times in the fall when the leaves were being raked up by old John, the colored gardener, who would let us climb on top of the brilliant load in a wheelbarrow with a crate on top of it. Such rides! Old John was a character (and one we loved dearly), not much over five feet tall, with grizzled hair and goatee, and always wearing an apron tied around his waist and a derby hat on his head.