The Assassin's Lair

[L Verge]

There's a nice article on the introduction of gas lighting in D.C. here http://blog.historian4hire.net/2010/11/16/gasman/ It does not pinpoint the exact streets that would have been lit by 1865, but the entrepreneurs would have had twenty years to work on it from the time of the first introduction in a private home on Capitol Hill in 1847. That home stood near the current Union Station until the early-1900s. It would not have been that far from the Surratt boardinghouse, and H Street was a nice, middle-class neighborhood at that time.

It was an Englishman, James Crutchett, who introduced the gas lighting to replace oil lamps. He called his invention Solar Lighting - sound familiar?

Before the Civil War, The Washington Gas Light Company was organized to produce and regulate gaslight in the city. When I was growing up, their headquarters was right beside Ford's Theatre on Tenth Street. I believe that the Hard Rock Cafe now occupies that old building.