The United States turns 250 this year, and I couldn’t let the country’s semiquincentennial pass without a visit to the capital. We went to review the Salamander DC hotel but ended up being drawn to a larger story: how our founders wanted to be remembered. We spent an afternoon at the National Archives, where the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution sit under glass in the Rotunda. We toured Anderson House, the Gilded Age headquarters of the first patriotic society, meant to preserve the memory of the Revolution. And we visited Mount Vernon, where George Washington expressed his artistic side.

National Archives Museum

As the nation’s record keeper, the National Archives and Records Administration holds the most important documents related to our country, including the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, collectively known as the Charters of Freedom. But it preserves much more, including billions of papers, photographs, reels of film, letters, maps and records dating back centuries. The newly renovated National Archives Museum showcases its holdings, and it was the high point of my visit to Washington, D.C. It’s always a thrill to see originals of these iconic texts that shape our lives to this day.

We began not with an American document but something quintessentially English: the Magna Carta, one of four originals from 1297. Its principles helped inspire our fledgling democracy. Next, we made our way to the Rotunda, a hallowed space that holds the Charters of Freedom, surrounded by Barry Faulkner’s expansive paintings, finished in 1936. As two of the largest single-piece oil-on-canvas murals in the U.S., they are extraordinary in their own right. In March, more documents were added to the Rotunda: the 19th Amendment, enfranchising women, and the Emancipation Proclamation.

As sacred as the Rotunda feels, I found The American Story, a new permanent exhibit that opened in November, to be the most moving experience at the archives. It showcases a wide range of materials that outline the country’s founding, the evolution of technology, the courage of military service members, the pomp of formal state visits, the beauty of the American West and the stories of everyday Americans. The most affecting pieces were handwritten letters. A 1974 missive to President Ford from a football coach opposing Title IX. A Hopi petition from 1894, written in beautiful penmanship and addressed “To the Washington Chiefs,” describing Hopi culture and asking to hold on to their land. And a letter home from a GI stationed at Dachau, who recounts the “emotional shock” of what he witnessed and his struggle to write about something he feared would “affect my personality for the rest of my life.”

The museum recommends 90 minutes to see all of the above, but we took half a day. It was time well spent.

National Archives Museum
701 Constitution Avenue. Washington, D.C. Tel. (202) 357-5000

Anderson House

Anderson House is a Gilded Age mansion on Embassy Row, near Dupont Circle. Built in 1905 by Larz Anderson, an American diplomat, and his wife, Isabel, a philanthropist, it was designed solely for entertaining — and it shows. The imposing 50-room residence contained a grand reception room, a dining room for dozens of guests, a two-story ballroom, an outdoor garden and a tennis court. Less a home than a social space, its rooms have a processional layout so guests could move through them in sequence, from reception and cocktails to dinner and entertainment.

Today, the house serves as the headquarters of the American Revolution Institute of the Society of the Cincinnati, the nation’s oldest private patriotic organization, of which Larz was a member. Founded in 1783 by officers of the Continental Army, the society was created to commemorate American independence and support veterans of the Revolutionary War. Its name honors Cincinnatus, the Roman farmer-statesman who defeated Rome’s enemies and immediately resigned his power — a model of selfless civic virtue. George Washington, the society’s first president, was widely celebrated as the American Cincinnatus for embodying those same ideals. Membership is open only to male descendants of Revolutionary War officers.

Our tour touched on the society’s history and its current role as an educational nonprofit but devoted most of its time to Larz and Isabel themselves — and the magnificent house, still decorated with their original collections of art and artifacts gathered during decades of world travel.

Anderson House
2118 Massachusetts Avenue, NW., Washington, D.C. Tel. (202) 785-2040

Mount Vernon

While history focuses on George Washington’s role as a Revolutionary War general and erudite president, the tour of Mount Vernon reveals another side of him: that of an aesthete who was preoccupied with every aspect of his home and how it reflected on him.

Transforming the modest residence — built by Washington’s father in 1734 — into a 21-room mansion, he added elaborate stucco work, gilded mirrors, neoclassical furnishings, large landscape paintings, a fashionable Wilton carpet, silk and wool damask, and startlingly vivid paint colors. Amid the Blue Room, the Yellow Room, the Chintz Room, etc., you’ll also encounter gifts from friends, like the elaborately carved marble mantel from Samuel Vaughan and an original key to the Bastille from the Marquis de Lafayette. My favorite space, and that of most guests, then and now, was the mansion’s two-story piazza, with its views of the Potomac River and the Maryland countryside.

About 45 minutes south of central D.C., the Mount Vernon estate consists of the home, grounds, gardens, outbuildings, slave quarters, Washington’s tomb and a slave memorial and cemetery. Despite having timed tickets, we had to stand in line under the hot sun to gain entry, only to be herded from room to room like cattle through chutes. If you want to avoid the crowds of schoolchildren, have the Travel Office arrange a private tour.

Mount Vernon
3200 Mount Vernon Memorial Highway, Mount Vernon. Tel. (703) 780-2000