Mt. Vernon!

Being new to the preservation field, I have a whole new world to explore. There are so many exciting historic districts and buildings out there that I never really gave much thought to. This past Christmas I went to the Washington D.C. area to visit my boyfriend and his family. Oh the possibilities! The East Coast is teaming with history from the built environment. It only seemed appropriate to start with the home of America's first President, so Jimmy and I caught a beautiful sunny day and drove out to Mt. Vernon.



Wow! We all know George Washington was an amazing person, but you can only learn so much about a person in a book. Experiencing his home was pretty surreal. This is a great example of how important Historic Preservation is. Can you imagine if this home had been torn down? Well it almost was. It was in shambles in the 1850's but thanks to the rallying efforts of the The Mount Vernon Ladies Association, the home was saved. This was no small feat, people didn't really get the whole idea of 'preservation' during this time. Clearly these ladies were pioneers for the preservation movement- go Ladies!!

The main home has 3 floors and about 21 rooms. Washington had fairly eclectic taste, his home had some unusual shaped rooms for his time, and he really liked the color green, lots of green! Unfortunately you can't take pictures inside the home, but check out this link for pictures of the interior: http://www.mountvernon.org/visit/plan/index.cfm/pid/543/
Here's an interior picture of one of his workers' quarters, you were free to photo everything outside of the main house



Looks pretty cozy to me! There is so much to see here it's hard to fit it all in in one day. The Washington's were pretty self-sustainable, they had their own gardens, farms, animals, distillery, stable, mule shed & paddock, coachhouse, washhouse, smokehouse, shoemaker's shop, blacksmith shop, dung repository, salthouse, etc. etc. They grew most of their own food and relied on resources from the area. The estate is really big, and really impressive! Here's a photo of the farm, you can see some sheep in the middle of the picture, and behind them you can see the gristmill.



There's so much great stuff to see here at Mt. Vernon and to learn about, certainly I don't have room to explain it all here, but if you'd like to learn more, or to plan a trip to Mt. Vernon, see this link: http://www.mountvernon.org/visit/index.cfm/ You can see a short movie on this website as well as take a virtual tour of the Mansion, and a plethora of other learning tools.

Mt. Vernon was really interesting and definitely recommended for all, whether you're into preservation or not, you'll still learn a lot about life in the 1700's and how our forefathers lived.