Woodlawn (Fairfax County, Virginia)

Woodlawn is a historic house on land subdivided from the Mount Vernon estate of George Washington, now located west of the junction of U.S. 1 and Route 235 near Alexandria, Virginia. George Washington gave the original 2,000-acre plantation as a wedding present in 1799 to his step-granddaughter Eleanor Parke Custis and his nephew Lawrence Lewis, who built the Federal-style house between 1800 and 1805 to a design by Dr. William Thornton, the architect of the U.S. Capitol; the land was later subdivided into smaller farms in the nineteenth century to demonstrate the viability of a free-labor system. Woodlawn is now a museum property owned and managed by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, designated a National Historic Landmark in 1998 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1970 and on the Virginia Landmarks Register, and its grounds also hold the Pope-Leighey House, a Frank Lloyd Wright residence relocated there in 1965.