Arlington House

Arlington House, also known as the Custis-Lee Mansion, is a Classical Revival style mansion built in 1802 on the Robert E. Lee Memorial Plantation in Arlington, Virginia. It overlooks Washington, D.C., and is operated by the National Park Service. This house is unique as it is the only federally funded memorial honoring an individual who fought against the United States.1

The estate was originally owned by Mary Anna Randolph Custis, the wife of Robert E. Lee, and was inherited from her father, George Washington Parke Custis, the adopted son of George Washington. During the Civil War, the property was seized by the U.S. government. After the war, a lawsuit led to Congress purchasing the land in 1882, rather than disturbing the burials that had begun there in 1864. Today, the grounds serve as Arlington National Cemetery, a burial ground for over 400,000 people, predominantly service members.1