Kicking Off America’s 250th at Mount Vernon

With the celebration of America’s 250th birthday now ramping up, and with the Fourth of July upon us, it’s time for a patriotic story and a chance to right an embarrassing wrong. I’d never been to Mount Vernon, George Washington’s Virginia home and a beacon light in historic preservation. I was in Washington a few weeks ago to visit National Review Institute’s office in Arlington, Va. Mount Vernon — the mansion, garden, distillery, tombs, museum, and splendid view — is a few miles away, so why not start our birthday year with Washington (1732–1799), the father of our country, our first president, and the man who won the Revolutionary War against the odds? And with Martha (1731–1802), very much the essential woman.

It’s a memorable experience. First, the house isn’t big, and it’s not Downton Abbey. It’s about 11,000 square feet, 21 rooms, some very small and very back-of-house, built as a four-room farmhouse in 1734 by Washington’s father, who owned about 3,000 acres of frontier, pristine woods, kitchen gardens, outbuildings, and land for crops. George was a two-year-old. Upstairs bedrooms were added, and Washington, who by 1761 owned Mount Vernon, expanded it, mostly in the 1770s, to be an elegant, instantly recognizable house, country-Palladian in style, with a spacious, colonnaded piazza facing not the entrance but the sweeping view of the Potomac River. Washington was the designer, and he wanted a distinctly English mansion recalling what he imagined country grandees in the mother country owned.

About the Author

Brian T. Allen

Brian T. Allen is National Review’s art critic.

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With the celebration of America’s 250th birthday now ramping up, and with the Fourth of July upon us, it’s time for a patriotic story and a chance to right an embarrassing wrong. I’d never been to Mount Vernon, George Washington’s Virginia home and a beacon light in historic preservation. I was in Washington a few weeks ago to visit National Review Institute’s office in Arlington, Va. Mount Vernon — the mansion, garden, distillery, tombs, museum, and splendid view — is a few miles away, so why not start our birthday year with Washington (1732–1799), the father of our country, our first president, and the man who won the Revolutionary War against the odds? And with Martha (1731–1802), very much the essential woman.

It’s a memorable experience. First, the house isn’t big, and it’s not Downton Abbey. It’s about 11,000 square feet, 21 rooms, some very small and very back-of-house, built as a four-room farmhouse in 1734 by Washington’s father, who owned about 3,000 acres of frontier, pristine woods, kitchen gardens, outbuildings, and land for crops. George was a two-year-old. Upstairs bedrooms were added, and Washington, who by 1761 owned Mount Vernon, expanded it, mostly in the 1770s, to be an elegant, instantly recognizable house, country-Palladian in style, with a spacious, colonnaded piazza facing not the entrance but the sweeping view of the Potomac River. Washington was the designer, and he wanted a distinctly English mansion recalling what he imagined country grandees in the mother country owned.