Arlington House

Arlington House, The Robert E. Lee Memorial, is a Greek revival style mansion located in Arlington, Virginia, on bluffs overlooking the Potomac River, directly across from the National Mall in Washington, D.C.. During the American Civil War, the grounds of the mansion were selected as the site of Arlington National Cemetery, in part to ensure that Confederate General Robert E. Lee would never again be able to return to his home. Yet the United States has since designated the mansion as a national memorial to its former opponent, a mark of widespread respect for Lee in both the North and South.

The mansion was built on the orders of George Washington Parke Custis, a step grandson of George Washington and the most prominent resident of what was then known as Alexandria County. The house was built on a 445-hectare (1,100-acre) estate that Custis' father, John Parke Custis, purchased in 1778. Custis named the house Arlington after the Custis family's homestead on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. George Hadfield, an English architect who also worked on the design of the U.S. Capitol designed the mansion. The north and south wings were completed between 1802 and 1804. The large center section and the portico, presenting an imposing front 43 meters (140 feet) long, were finished 13 years later. The most prominent features of the house are the 8 massive columns of the portico, each 5 feet (1.5 m) in diameter.

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