FALLS CHURCH, Va. (AP) — The Virginia mansion where Robert E. Lee once lived that now overlooks Arlington National Cemetery is open to the public again, after a $12 million rehabilitation and reinterpretation that includes an increased emphasis on those who were enslaved there.
The National Park Service opened Arlington House to the public on Tuesday for the first time since 2018. The mansion and surrounding grounds had been expected to reopen in 2019, but delays and the coronavirus pandemic extended the closure.
The rehabilitation was funded by philanthropist David Rubenstein, who has also donated millions for the Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial and other historical sites around the D.C. region.
The mansion, which commands an unrivaled view of the nation’s capital and the Potomac River, is best known as the home of the Confederate general leading up to the Civil War. But its history goes well beyond Lee.
George Washington Parke Custis, the adopted son of George Washington, built the mansion as a memorial of sorts to the country’s first president. Robert E. Lee came to Arlington House after he married Custis’ daughter, Mary Anna Randolph Custis.
In telling the stories of the people who were enslaved there, historians must contend with the fact that oftentimes little is written about enslaved populations. While Arlington House has extensive records in a few cases, the problem exists there just as it does elsewhere, said Charles Cuvelier, superintendent of the George Washington Memorial Parkway, the National Park Service unit that manages Arlington House.
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