"We have done very little investigation there; there is a great deal yet to do": The changing historic landscape of George Washington’s Mount Vernon.
Author(s): Luke Pecoraro
Year: 2017
Summary
For several decades, the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association (MVLA) has used the benchmark year of 1799 for landscape interpretation within the estate’s historic core. Efforts to restore the grounds and dependencies have been a paramount concern, but elements such as a colonial revival garden (1930s), relic house (1928), and porters’ lodges (c. 1818) survive. Along with these features, different generations of historic plantings of trees and shrubberies and associated gravel pathways exist from the designs of prominent landscape architects such as Charles Sprague Sargent, Morley Williams, and Rudy Favretti are extant. The challenges of working with a multi-temporal landscape as well as the possibilities this presents from an archaeological and interpretive standpoint are revealed in this paper, and the current efforts being undertaken for the historic grounds restoration.
Cite this Record
"We have done very little investigation there; there is a great deal yet to do": The changing historic landscape of George Washington’s Mount Vernon.. Luke Pecoraro. Presented at Society for Historical Archaeology, Fort Worth, TX. 2017 ( tDAR id: 435219)
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Keywords
General
Cultural Landscape
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Historic Site
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Plantation
Geographic Keywords
North America
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United States of America
Spatial Coverage
min long: -129.199; min lat: 24.495 ; max long: -66.973; max lat: 49.359 ;
Individual & Institutional Roles
Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology
Record Identifiers
PaperId(s): 199