The building dates to a period when the south end of 17th Street, NW was a wharf and Constitution Avenue, NW was the location of a section of the Washington City Canal, which connected the Potomac and Anacostia rivers.

[3] The lockkeeper's house was built in 1837 for toll collecting and record keeping, only to be abandoned in 1855 with the demise of the canal 30 years after its construction — which by then had ceded transportation of heavy goods to the nascent railroads and deteriorated into an open sewer.

[3] In disrepair, the building became a squatters' tenement[5] and in 1903 was partially renovated as a headquarters for the United States Park Police, with a holding cell.

[2] In October 2017, a National Park Service (NPS) contractor moved the building 36 feet (11.0 m) to the south and 35 feet (10.7 m) to the west (away from Constitution Avenue, NW, and 17th Street, NW) while retaining the structure's east-west orientation.

[6][10][11] The house now serves in its new location as an NPS education center as part of the first phase of a renovation of Constitution Gardens.