I stumbled on Washington Mews during my art school days when I would just wander the streets of NYC for hours on end in search of “inspiration.” This row of houses inside a gate intrigued me because they didn’t really look like regular homes. When I turned to my reliable research tool—Google—I realized why. They were first built as mews (hence the name Washington Mews), which were rows of stables, for the homes in the area. If we dig a little bit further, these houses sit on what originally were part of the Lenape trail which connected the two rivers (Hudson and East) that flank Manhattan. The Lenape are an indigenous people whose historical territory spanned from eastern Pennsylvania to New Jersey to NYC. They were forcibly removed from their homes and sent to the Indian Territory or present-day Oklahoma. Another interesting tidbit: the Lenape are matrilineal and matrilocal.