Herbert John Moffat and his wife Annie Vickers Spider moved to Hyattsville from Washington, D.C., shortly after their marriage in 1893. 

The new streetcar line accessing downtown Washington spurred a local building boom marketed to a broader economic audience and marked by more modest homes. 

Moffat arrived ready to take advantage of lower housing prices for his own family and also to put his carpentry trade to good use. 

Moffat constructed this Schley Avenue (located on the south side of what is now the 4100 block of Emerson Street) block of Dutch Colonial and Victorian verancular houses about 1906, moving his family into one of the houses. 

Moffat established himself as a contractor and builder and later moved into the real estate business.