East Coast Trek — Part II:
The Everchanging Mount Vernon
The house that George Washington’s father, Augustine Washington build on the premise of the present site of the Mount Vernon estate in 1734 was a very much smaller building than the one that greats the visitor to the estate today. From the time Washington took over the running of the estate in 1754 he started building out and up.
This was also the sight that greeted us as we arrived at the estate. The western facade was in scaffolding as it was being cleaned off and a new layer of plaster was being added. The guide explained first that this was a unique opportunity to se the original process that was used to treat the outside of the mansion, which of course it was. More interestingly he told us, that the path approaching the mansion had been planned by Washington himself. The idea was the path winded its way up towards the house. So, when you were arriving in your horse-drawn carriage you would glimpse the house several times each time seeming bigger and bigger as you approached.
From the 1750s Washington started expanding on the father his father had built. First by adding a second story to the original house and then adding on rooms in two stories on both north and west side of the building during the 1770s. In 1775 he added two single story secondary wings housing the servant’s quarters and the kitchens and these were connected to the house in 1778 through colonnades on both the north and south sides of the building.
But 1778 wasn’t the last year of building, altering and renovation. The work continues to this day. In recent years the colonnades had been fitted with ramps allowing wheelchairs, strollers and walkers direct access to the house. You enter the house through “The New Room”. This was the latest and the grandest addition to the house and it was a place for entertaining guests and presenting of not only the Washingtons but also the country — presented through great commissioned paintings on the walls.
The next room on the tour was the front parlor that was the grandest room in the house until The New Room came about. Next was the small parlor, that was a converted first floor bedroom. If you were a visitor when Washington lived here, you would of course have entered through the front door into the central passage. Both before the house was expanded and on hot summer nights the central passage was used for entertaining guests — best to enjoy the cool breeze from the open doorways.
The central passage also includes the beautiful black walnut staircase that was added during expansions of the house. The previous staircase was moved and reused for access to the third floor of the house. From the central passage there was access to both the dining room and the downstairs bedroom. Through both these rooms and directly from the east and west front of the house you could access Washington’s study. Aside from the other accessways the study could also be accessed from the staircase from the Washingtons’ private bedroom. Since the private bedroom was Mrs. Washington’s domain George Washington kept his clothes and showered in his study. He used to say that the bedroom was Mrs. Washington’s room and he only slept there. Which is was cause the bedroom also doubled as Mrs. Washington’s office.
The entire ground floor of the mansion was accessible one way or another. This was not, however, the case with the two upstairs floors but a solution has been found. Wheelchair users and others hard at walking was provided with a tablet and played a video of a guided tour of the upstairs rooms.
Lavishly decorated the bedrooms on the first floor — four in all plus the private bedroom — were fit to entertain the most important guests. The Blue, The Yellow and the Chintz rooms were all rooms you could be installed in as a guest. In addition, the Lafayette room got its name because it is believed that the Marquis stayed here. The Marquis of course being an important ally in the war for independence. Finally, there was the room “at the top of the stairs”. A smaller room in a sense left over from a larger room changed in renovations.
In the late 1750 added a third floor to the house. This floor was not a part of the tour, but it consisted of four bedrooms and storage rooms for lumber and the fine porcelain. More interestingly is the cupola that Washington had built atop the third floor. It’s a feature you don’t see often on private buildings, but the purpose of the copula was mostly to drain excess heat from the rest of the house — hot air travels upwards. It also had the added bonus of disguising the fact that the west facade was slightly asymmetrical due to the many addons to the building.
Our tour ended and I was reunited with my wife who uses a wheelchair and was watching the virtual tour on a tablet on the porch on the east facade and enjoying the view. She was complaining that our tour of the top floors had been to short because she hadn’t finished the virtual tour yet.
But an estate like this is much more than just the main building. If you want, you can spend hours exploring both gardens and the many workshops also on the estates. Many of them even working workshops like the blacksmith shop, the spinnery and the distillery. The grounds also include a green house, stables and, of course, the slave quarters.
Read the first part of the Series: East Coast Trek — Part I: Accessible USA
