Wheat Row, constructed in 1794, is the city’s oldest standing group of rowhouses. Located in Southwest near the waterfront on 1315 through 1321 4th Street SW, the Federal-style cluster are designed to appear as a single structure. Named after a resident and Senate messenger, John Wheat, these rowhouses are one of the few remaining pre-1950 buildings to survive the massive urban renewal the government undertook on the neighborhood.

Wheat Row was part of a large development scheme in the interest in quickly developing the Capital city for housing. Land speculator James Greenleaf purchased 3,000 city lots from the city at very cheap rates to develop them into housing. In return for the affordable rates, Greenleaf built ten houses a year for seven years and lent them to the government. At one time, he and his partners controlled more than a third of the buildings for sale in the city. This didn’t last long though, as there wasn’t enough demand for the buildings. Greenleaf went bankrupt in 1797.

It is rumored that the Thomas Jefferson once dined in one of the Wheat Row houses. Now on the National Register of Historic Places, the homes are still private residences.