George Washington's Mansion at Mount Vernon is the centerpiece of his historic estate along the Potomac River.

1. In 1734, when George Washington was only two years old, his father had built the core of what became Washington's Mansion.

George Washington’s father, Augustine Washington, built a modest one and a half story house there in 1734. Washington’s elder half-brother Lawrence lived at the property from 1741 until his death in 1752. George Washington began leasing the property in 1754. Although he did not inherit it outright until 1761, he expanded the house in the last 1750s, raising the roof to make the Mansion two and a half stories high. In 1774, he began to add the north and south wings, the cupola and piazza to create the structure we see today.

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2. The Mansion is ten times the size of the average home in colonial Virginia.

At almost 11,000 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 24x31 foot New Room. The ceilings of the Mansion vary in height—the average height on the first floor is 10’ 9”, while on the third floor it is 7’3”.

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3. The Mansion is not symmetrical, but George Washington wanted it to be.

Before Washington began construction work in 1774, he executed a design drawing showing how he intended the west front of the Mansion to look. The drawing shows the façade as completely symmetrical with the front door and cupola on the center axis, with the windows balanced to either side of it. But in truth, the door and cupola do not align, nor are the windows symmetrically placed. The construction of the stair in 1758 pushed the door to the north and a window south out of the passage and into the small dining room. This break with the architectural ideal is a good example of the value Washington placed on practical solutions to challenging questions.