Built in 1807, the Bank of Alexandria at 133 North Fairfax Street shows you its three-story main block and two-story east wing. Built in 1807, it presents a three-story main block with a two-story east wing; the main block is five bays wide and seven bays deep. In 1848 James Green purchased this building and turned it into a hotel, then in 1855 he expanded it across the lawn of the Carlyle House next door, tripling the size of the Mansion House Hotel.
That hotel later served as a hospital during the Civil War. In the late 1960s the expansion, by then an aging apartment building, was torn down by the Northern Virginia Regional Park Authority, a move that revealed Carlyle House, which was restored in 1976. The remaining part of the original bank building was listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places in 1973 and today sits within the Alexandria Historic District.
Picture the hotel wing that once crossed this lawn, now gone, leaving only the restored Carlyle House and the open space where that history was peeled back.