The monument is named after suffragists and National Woman's Party leaders Alva Belmont and Alice Paul.

Since 1929 the house has served as headquarters of the National Woman's Party, a key political organization in the fight for women's suffrage.

On February 12, 1663, the third Lord Baltimore granted a land patent of 1,000 acres (4.0 km2) in New Scotland Hundred to George Thompson.

The property (which was now called Duddington Manor) changed hands, was subdivided, and inherited a number of times before it came into the possession of nine-year-old Daniel Carroll in 1773.

[4] On July 9, 1790, Congress passed the Residence Act, which approved the creation of a national capital on the Potomac River.

[5] Congress subsequently purchased all land in the new district from its private owners (the "original patentees"), including Carroll.

[7][11] Although the Sewall family rarely occupied the home, its size, beauty, and location led many prominent government leaders to reside there.

These included Albert Gallatin, who served as Secretary of the Treasury under Thomas Jefferson and James Madison,[8] and Reverdy Johnson, U.S.

[9] Tradition maintains that British troops set fire to the house during the War of 1812, and that gunfire from within or behind the Sewall residence provoked the attack.

[14] After the house was partially burned by the British in 1814, Sewall sought reimbursement from the federal government for the damages.

[9] Sewall died in the house on December 16, 1820, leaving the building to his wife, Polly, and his four surviving daughters.

[18] Sewall House was empty from Ellen Daingerfield's death in 1912 until 1922,[18] when it was purchased by Senator Porter H. Dale of Vermont.

[20] On May 8, 1921, the National Woman's Party (NWP) announced it had purchased the Old Brick Capitol, a historic red brick structure built in 1815 by Congress as a temporary site for the national legislature until the United States Capitol (burned during the War of 1812) could be rebuilt.

[30] In November 1928 the National Woman's Party accepted an award of $299,200 (~$4.2 million in 2023) for their existing headquarters in the Old Capitol Prison.

[32] The structure was renamed the Alva Belmont House during the NWP's national convention, which opened on December 6, 1929.

[27] When the Old Capitol was demolished, women from the NWP showed up with wheelbarrows to rescue bricks from the structure, which they then used to pave the patio in the Belmont House garden.

[38][39] In 1965, by Senator Stephen M. Young introduced legislation in Congress to purchase the Sewall–Belmont House and turn it into a residence for the Vice President of the United States.

Architectural historian L. Morris Leisenring had studied the Belmont–Paul House for the Architect of the Capitol, and concluded that the two adjacent structures had once been slave quarters and a tobacco barn, and warranted preservation.

[46] Changes to the architectural design of the building moved the parking garage entrance to the northern side of the proposed structure, which left the government seeking to condemn the NWP's two outbuildings for use as greenspace.

[47] In 1974, Congress voted to provide the National Woman's Party with $300,000 (~$1.44 million in 2023) in historic preservation funds to help renovate and maintain the house.

[48] But major budget cuts enacted the following year jeopardized these funds,[49] and the Historic American Buildings Survey has concluded that they never occurred.

[19] Maintaining the structure proved increasingly costly,[53] so the organization began renting the Sewall–Belmont House as a meeting center and wedding site.

The discovery of mold in the Florence Bayard Hilles Research Library in 2014 forced the museum to spend $75,000 (~$95,088 in 2023) to remove it.

In January and February 2016, heavy snowfall damaged copper gutters at the house, forcing the museum to cancel most of its Women's History Month programming to pay for repairs.

Funded through the Great American Outdoors Act (GAOA), the restoration includes installation of new HVAC equipment throughout the house, rehabilitation of all historic windows, installation of a new metal roof, an extension of fire sprinkler protection to the Library, plaster wall/ceiling & crack repairs, lead paint abatement, structural flooring repairs, and increased storm water drainage capacity in the backyard.

The National Woman's Party found the building increasingly costly to maintain, and the transfer of title would allow for better conservation of the site.

Financier David Rubenstein also announced he would make a $1 million donation to the National Park Foundation to help restore and conserve the house and support its ongoing mission.

[62] The Historic American Buildings Survey has concluded that the structure has been so modified over the years that it no longer belongs to a single architectural style but, rather, reflects as many as seven different genres.

Each dormer is surrounded by decorative millwork with two dentils below, square Tuscan pillars with indents on either side, a lintel with the circular bas-relief, and a plain triangular pediment.

The interior floor plan is typical of an Adam Federalist house, with a center hall and two symmetrical rooms on either side.