Folks now dine at famous
location where assassination
plot was hatched

This is one you file under “How Things Change.”

The Wok and Roll Chinese restaurant in Washington D.C. is located on that part of H Street that’s now in the heart of the district’s Chinatown. Its address is 604 H Street, but the building formerly had the street number of 541. It previously was a Chinese grocery (Suey Sang Lung Company) and the location of an earlier restaurant (Go-lo’s). In 1865, it was the Surratt Boarding House where the Lincoln assassination conspirators met.

John Wilkes Booth assassinated President Abraham Lincoln on April 14, 1865, five days after Lee surrendered at Appomattox. At the same time, Lewis Powell and David Herold attacked the bed-ridden Secretary of State William Seward, his son Frederick and his bodyguard. George Atzerodt got drunk and failed to assassinate Vice-President Johnson.

The conspirators had been meeting at the boarding house operated by a pro-southern Catholic widow from Maryland named Mary Surratt. The original plan was to abduct the president, but events overtook the conspirators and they moved on to assassination.

Controversy continues to surround the trial and execution of Mary Surratt for her alleged part in the assassination. In his refusal to pardon her, President Andrew Johnson said “she kept the nest that hatched the egg.”