You only have a few weeks to plan a visit before the first president’s mansion shuts down for a major construction project. The Mount Vernon estate along the Potomac River in Virginia will close temporarily on Nov. 1.
Susan Schoelwer, Mount Vernon’s executive director of Historic Preservation and Collections, said there will still be one room, “the new room,” open for viewing.
“It was George Washington’s latest addition to the house. It’s a very formal room. It contained his art gallery. So four original paintings that he commissioned,” she said.
Schoelwer said the goal is to have the mansion in its best shape by July 2026, the nation’s semiquincentennial anniversary, but the home is expected to open to the public several months before that. In the meantime, she still wants people to visit the estate.
“There is so much more to see. You could easily spend a full day. It’s just a beautiful setting. George Washington said there is ‘no estate in the United Americas more pleasantly situated,’” Schoelwer said.
Other sites including the museum’s galleries, demonstration farm, the Washington tomb and the memorial and cemetery for enslaved people will still be open. This year’s Christmas celebration will also go on as planned.
While there have been many one-off repairs since the Mount Vernon Ladies Association acquired the estate in 1860, Schoelwer said some of those repairs haven’t integrated well. She explained that preservation technology has evolved and it was time for a comprehensive project.
“This is a 300-year-old wooden house that was never intended to last 300 years, was never intended to have a million people a year going through. It’s had a lot of use over the years,” she said.
Earlier this year, as part of the rehabilitation project, archaeologists found sealed jars of 18th century cherries buried under the mansion’s cellar.
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