John Beattie established a slave auction site on Gay Street (now O Street).He also held auctions at Montgomery Tavern on High Street (now Wisconsin Avenue). Georgetown's taverns and waterfront formed an important part of the domestic slave trade. Long before the federal district was fully built, Georgetown was already a thriving tobacco and slave trading port on the Potomac River. Its wharves, taverns, and commercial streets formed an interlocking infrastructure for human trafficking that connected enslaved Africans and their American-born descendants to markets stretching from Maryland's tobacco counties to the cotton fields of the Deep South. Public auctions were held at John Beattie's block on Gay Street and at establishments like the Montgomery Tavern on High Street (now Wisconsin Avenue). Georgetown's role in the trade predated — and in many ways financed — the development of the broader D.C. economy. The streets that today draw tourists for their boutiques and Federal architecture were built, in significant part, on the profits of this commerce.