Mount Vernon
The first president of the United States was born and raised in Virginia, and this is where he made his home. George Washington’s estate, known as Mount Vernon, is located on the Potomac River just outside of what is now Alexandria, Va.
Owned by the family since 1674, the estate was passed down in 1754 to George, who constructed the estate’s iconic mansion in stages from 1757-1778. The home may have been the original McMansion: It is ten times the size of the average home in colonial Virginia, according to www.mountvernon.org. At 11,028 square feet with two and a half stories and a full cellar, the Mansion dwarfed the majority of dwelling houses in late 18th-century Virginia. Most Virginians lived in one- or two-room houses ranging in size from roughly 200 to 1,200 square feet; most of these houses could have fit inside the 24-by-31-foot New Room.
After falling into ruin throughout the later part of the 18th century and for most of the 19th, the mansion was restored by the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association beginning in the 1850s. In one of the newest upgrades, a 14-month, $600,000 renovation last year restored the home’s “New Room,” envisioning it more as George and Martha Washington would have used it.
