Tiber Creek had once run along B Street NW (now Constitution Avenue NW), and the dock had once extended into Tiber Creek. In 1815, Tiber Creek was straightened and connected to and became part of the Washington City Canal. The canal fell into disuse by the 1850s. Tiber Creek was enclosed by a masonry tunnel beginning in 1878 and the tunnel connected to the city's sewer system so that the creek's natural flow would help flush sewage into the Potomac River. Much of the area immediately south and west of the B Street NW and the Washington Monument was, at the time, part of the Potomac River. After a disastrous flood in 1881, the United States Army Corps of Engineers dredged a deep channel in the Potomac and used the material to fill in the Potomac (creating the current banks of the river) and raise much of the land near the White House and along Pennsylvania Avenue NW by nearly six feet (two metres). One or more of these actions buried the Tiber Creek dock. See: Tindall, William. Standard History of the City of Washington From a Study of the Original Sources. Knoxville, Tenn.: H.W. Crew & Co., 1914; Heine, Cornelius W. "The Washington City Canal." Records of the Columbia Historical Society of Washington, D.C. 1953; "The Tiber Creek Sewer Flush Gates, Washington, D.C."[usurped]Engineering News and American Railway Journal. February 8, 1894; Evelyn, Dickson, and Ackerman, On This Spot: Pinpointing the Past in Washington, D.C., 2008; Bednar, L'Enfant's Legacy: Public Open Spaces in Washington, 2006; Du Puy, "New Washington Buildings Emerge," The New York Times, June 1, 1930.
