WASHINGTON, D.C. —
From the Lincoln Memorial, the Custis-Lee Mansion resembles a stage prop, a make-believe Greek temple. Its six enormous Doric columns were designed to catch the eye of all who gazed across the Potomac and up to the wooded hilltop.
They were impressive in 1818, when the house was completed, and they’re still impressive today.
I have been to Washington many times, and I once lived there for four months. I have visited most of the Smithsonian museums, the Capitol, the White House, the galleries, the monuments, Mount Vernon, Alexandria, lovely Georgetown.
But my favorite place is the Custis-Lee Mansion, which looms high above the thousands of white marble tombstones of Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Va. The former home of Col. Robert E. Lee is refreshingly homey. Despite that enormous portico, most of the rooms are no bigger than those of a normal house. I can imagine living in it.
It forms a human-scale oasis in a city filled with monumental structures.
I was in Washington a couple of weeks ago with my older daughter, Ruth. She wanted to visit Arlington National Cemetery to see the grave of President Kennedy and the Tomb of the Unknowns. Unlike many visitors, we also ascended the steps to Arlington House.
The National Park Service has been repairing the building for four years, so all of the downstairs furniture, chandeliers and rugs are in storage. The guide said the project will be complete this summer; a staffer in the book shop said he may have been optimistic.
No matter. Arlington House still casts its spell. While repairs are under way, visitors are allowed to walk into rooms that they normally could view only from a doorway.
The house, once the focal point of a 1,100-acre plantation, was built by George Washington Parke Custis. He was raised from infancy by his grandmother, Martha Dandridge Custis Washington, and her second husband, Gen. George Washington.
In 1831, Custis’ daughter, Mary, married Lt. Robert E. Lee in the family parlor at Arlington House. The Lees called the house their home for three decades.
Lee once wrote that it was where “my affections and attachments are more strongly placed than at any other place in the world.”
After Custis died in 1857, Lee took leave from the Army to manage the estate and make repairs. When the Civil War broke out in 1861, Col. Lee declined President Lincoln’s offer to command Union forces and resigned his U.S. Army commission. The Virginian took command of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia.
His family was forced to abandon Arlington House, and the Lees never lived there again. The Federal Army occupied it and felled 200 acres of virgin oak trees for firewood. The first war dead were buried in the rose garden in 1864. Hundreds of thousands of burials have followed.
Much has changed. But the sweeping view of the capitol from Arlington House, and the dreamy vision of Arlington House from the capitol, go on and on.
Danville native Kevin Cullen is a former Commercial-News reporter. Reach him at irishhiker@aol.com.
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