Hawthorne Heights was first built by James Brook Hart as a small raised cottage. Hart’s wife Mariah Virginia Collier Hart was the founder of the Wayside Home. The house was named for a large hawthorn hedge surrounding its adjoining eight acre garden. The garden was an attraction in its own right, featuring a plant for every letter of the alphabet, as well as a tea bush sent to Washington by Commodore Matthew Perry from Japan in 1854. The house took on its present appearance in 1900, when the first porch was removed and the columns added.
Union Point Historic District, National Register of Historic Places
