George Washington – whose half-brother Augustine Washington, Jr.'s son, Capt William Augustine Washington married Tayloe's sister, Sarah 'Sally' Tayloe, on May 11, 1799 – found out and persuaded the Tayloe's to build their house in the new capital city in an outlying section. The plan was to establish a node of development to stimulate fill-in growth. Col. Tayloe had been considering building his new home in Philadelphia under the expert hands of architect Benjamin Latrobe. Instead he chose the primitive wilds of the new federal city and the architect Dr. William Thornton, the man who designed the new United States Capitol and the help of James Hoban winner of the White House design contest. Col. Tayloe went with the wishes of George Washington. On April 19, 1797, Tayloe paid $1,000 to Gustavus W. Scott for lot 8 in Square 170, at the corner of New York Avenue and 18th St., N.W. as laid out in a plan of the District of Columbia by Maj. Pierre Charles L'Enfant and surveyed by Andrew Ellicott. Scott was one of the 1st purchasers of lots in the newly platted capital. The lot was in open country west of the partly built President's House, about 1 mi. from Georgetown, and about .5 mi. NE of Hamburgh, which was absorbed into the new city plan. During this time he established the Washington Jockey Club's on a mile track which extended from the rear of what is now the site of Decatur House at H Street and Jackson Place, crossing Seventeenth Street and Pennsylvania Avenue to Twentieth Street with Charles Carnan Ridgely, the current site of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. On April 19, 1799 Dr. William Thornton wrote to George Washington, "Mr. J. Tayloe, of Virginia, has contracted to build a house in the City near the President's Square of $13,000 value." Thoronton was a self-trained architect who had won the United States Capitol competition. His first problem was to plan a house that would fit the lot, the south side of which was cut away on the bias by the diagonal of New York Ave. If the house were built to face either of the bordering streets, it would be at an ungainly angle in relation to the other street, and outbuildings and wells had to be fitted in also. He dealt with the problem by relating the house equally to both streets, which put