Today's home is a real piece of Washington history. Halcyon House is now a 30,500 square foot property and the oldest part of the house was built in the late 1780s by Benjamin Stoddert. the first secretary of the Navy. The home has undergone a 17-year restoration. HGTV has a piece on the restoration of the home which was also once owned by Albert Clemens, the nephew of Samuel Clemens, a.k.a. Mark Twain. Clemens added two wings of apartments in 1880 and Halcyon House was used as rental apartments and housing for students at Georgetown University during most of the 20th century. HGTV reports that John Dreyfuss moved into the home in the 1970s and details the extensive work he did to restore the home. A piece from the NY Times back in 1995 goes into even greater explanation, including the detail that Dreyfuss began the huge project when he was just 28.

The mansion has five bedrooms and the property also has five rental apartments and a separate townhouse. It has been the site of many weddings and grand events. It's also got one of the highest prices I've ever seen in the area, it is listed at $30 million.

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I saw this apartment listed in the Wall Street Journal's Private Properties column and liked it so much I decided to make it an estate of the day. This condo on Water Street in the Georgetown area of Washington, D.C. overlooks the Potomac River. The current owners combined three units into one to create a six-bedroom expanse decorated in a modern style. The building also has a rooftop pool, gym and 24-hour staff. The Wall Street Journal reports that the city's condo record is thought to be a Georgetown sale for $6.25 million which means that even if this one sells pretty far below the listing price of $10.6 million it will still likely set a record.

Our modern Monday pick takes us to Washington D.C. and a rather non-traditional Georgetown townhouse. This throughly modern home is a four-story Le Corbusier-inspired work of utterly angular lines. The seven-bedroom home has multiple terraces and a wide open floor plan. The home is utterly spare and bare, all dark wood and white walls and bathrooms that trip the line between stark and institutional. It is listed at $3.45 million. After the jump, not a curve in sight.