Amidst the government buildings and the lobbyist wheeling and dealings, the essence of D.C. past and present is frequently lost. People are constantly saying that D.C. itself has no history. People lament how it’s not a “big city,” how it doesn’t have the identity and flavor of New York, or Boston.

D.C. has history in abundance, with a formidable piece of it on 1307 New Hampshire Avenue, NW; this particular piece just happens to involve beer. Built in 1892-1894, the Heurich House, also know as Brewmaster’s Castle, was home to one of the world’s oldest beer brewers, Christian Heurich, whose relatives now make the local brews Foggy Bottom Ale and Lager (the brewery stood where the Kennedy Center now stands). Heurich, a German immigrant himself, employed more German immigrants than anyone in Washington. German-info.org says of the building, “His home mixes the “good life” of a moneyed aristocrat with the Old World charm of an immigrant who made his fortune through hard work.” As it turns out, we have a piece of German-American business and beer-brewing history right in our own backyard.

The Castle has achieved notoriety as the most intact late-Victorian house museum in the United States. This gorgeous and intricate mansion, with its hand-carved wood, hand-painted ceiling canvases and forward-thinking technology of the time (plumbing), has been featured on A&E’s America’s Castles as well as HGTV’s Dream Builders. It was the first fireproof residence and smart house in the nation’s capital. Mike Grass, co-founder of DCist and Local editor of the Washington Post’s Express, notes, “The house, with its original furnishings and decorations, is a living time machine to waning days of Washington’s Gilded Age, the time after the Civil War when the nation’s capital was transformed from a sleepy town along the Potomac, to a real functioning city.” The Castle is a time capsule in building-form.