Site
Arlington House, The Robert E. Lee Memorial
Arlington National Cemetery
Arlington 22211
Daily, 9:30am - 4:30pm
1hr - Visitors typically spend 10-20 minutes in each of Arlington House's four buildings.
Bags shouldn’t be larger than 18 x 16 x 8 inches
Parking - located at the main Memorial Avenue entrance, next to the Welcome Center. $3 per hour, with a daily maximum of $12 a day for passenger vehicles.
Arrival - Access to Arlington House is through Arlington National Cemetery either from the Cemetery’s Parking Garage or by Arlington Cemetery Metro. You cannot drive directly to Arlington House. From within the Cemetery you can take the Arlington Cemetery Tour trolley, or walk, about 15-20 minutes from the Arlington National Cemetery Visitor Center Security Access Point up a hill to Arlington House.
History
Originally constructed between 1802 and 1818, the house was built to be both the residence of George Washington Parke Custis and as the nation's first memorial to his adoptive grandfather, George Washington. The home became the repository of hundreds of relics and artifacts that once belonged to George and Martha Washington at Mount Vernon.
Custis' daughter Mary Anna Randolph Custis would then marry a young Robert E. Lee in the house in 1831. This house became the residence of Robert E. Lee and his family before the Civil War. Over the 60 years leading up to the Civil War, Arlington House was also home to nearly 100 enslaved African Americans who lived and labored on the estate.
During the American Civil War, the house was seized by the Union Army who proceeded to turn the plantation into a military cemetery, Arlington National Cemetery.
Leonard Norris, one of the enslaved people who lived at Arlington House.
The Slave Quarters
Located in back of the main house are two rectangular buildings, which are set at right angles to the house, forming a small service court. These buildings, the two surviving slave quarters which housed enslaved people who were the house servants of the Custis and Lee family, have three rooms each, and have stone foundations with rough stucco walls featuring Greek Revival architectural details. It is thought that Hadfield also planned these buildings. The stone well is located between one of these structures and the North Wing of the house.
The Summer Kitchen was located in the North Slave Quarters and housed the carriage driver, Daniel and his son, Daniel in one room. George Clark, the long-time plantation cook, and his assistant lived in another room. The “Summer Kitchen” was located in a basement of this building, but was filled in at some point and no longer exists.
The South Slave Quarters housed Selina Gray, Mrs. Custis's personal maid and trusted housekeeper. She, her husband and their eight children lived in one room with a small loft where some of the children slept. The loft was accessible by ladder and the crawl-space attic had a ceiling only high enough for small children. There were no windows in the attic. The middle room in the South Quarters building was used as a Smoke House where hams and other meats would be hung from the ceiling to smoke and cure. The third room in this building housed other slaves that worked in the Custis-Lee household.
There was a slave School House located in the grove of trees behind the flower garden and roughly where the Old Amphitheatre of the National Cemetery is now located. Enslaved field workers lived in log cabins, mostly in the southern end of the plantation, but none of these cabins have survived.
