Architecture Overview, Monsa by Joseph Maria Minguet

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Although the instrument departed with Nelly to her nearby home at Woodlawn after the general’s death, descendants returned it to Mount Vernon, where it is now installed in the Little Parlor. The hall, or passage, is the house’s internal crossroads, running the depth of the home, allowing for breezes in the warm Virginia climate, and accessing both the upper floors and four principal downstairs rooms. Visible through the open doorway to the left is the Small Dining Room; even at a distance, its verdigris green glazing is striking.

He listened more often than he spoke and, in his characteristically measured manner, he made the best decisions he could for the country he helped found. He set countless precedents that, to this day, guide the conduct of the nation’s president. When his second term in office neared an end, he set perhaps the most important precedent of all when he retired willingly to his home, Mount Vernon, enabling the crucial mechanism of succession to advance the democratic experiment to its next stage. Each of the men who followed him would, in his own way, build upon Washington’s foundation.

Above: The desk in the upstairs study came from Paris, where Henry Adams used it in his apartment; the ormolu clock on the mantel belonged to his grandfather John Quincy Adams. But it was John Adams who spent many of his later years in this room, his body enfeebled but his mind clear. Right: Gilbert Stuart, the most gifted American painter of his generation, made likenesses of most of the rich and powerful people in Federal America. His last sitter would be John Quincy Adams, whom he painted in 1828.