The building in which the distillery originally operated was constructed circa 1892 under the guidance of Dr. C.A. Max Wiehle, a physician from Philadelphia who retired from practice at the age of 41 and tried to establish a town and farming community known as Wiehle on 3,228 acres of land he purchased in 1882. The first floor served as the Wiehle town hall, and the second floor housed the Wiehle Methodist Episcopal church. The building originally featured an 80 lb bell and a steeple, which were later removed to satisfy community concerns over having a distillery with the appearance of a church. The movement to build the town foundered after the death of Dr. Wiehle from pneumonia in 1901, and the building ceased to serve as a town hall in 1909. The church had moved elsewhere in 1907. For a time, the building then became a single-family residence and general store, until purchased by Abram Smith Bowman in 1927 as part of a 4,000-acre parcel called Sunset Hills. Bowman would later make an additional 3,240-acre purchase of what was known as the Dunn Tract in 1947 – creating the largest privately owned property in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area, which would remain so until nearly all of the land was sold to a real estate company in 1960. After a brief transitional ownership by the real estate company, a 60-acre area containing the distillery was sold back to Bowman's sons Abram Smith, Jr., and Delong.
