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Top Ten Things the Lincolns Saw at the Soldiers’ Home
This year the Cottage is celebrating ten years of being open to the public. As part of #10YearsofPLC, we’re bringing you various top ten lists related to Lincoln and the Cottage. With the recent news that the Cottage is unveiling new spaces for site rentals, we’re focusing on the beautiful grounds of the Soldiers’ Home (today know as the Armed …
Read MorePreservation Update: Discoveries in the East Wing
Since the Petworth Cooperative Playgroup is using the east wing of the Cottage for a play space, we needed to remove the lead paint in the adjacent storage room. This revamp shifted our attention to the space just off the East Wing of the Cottage, not typically open to the public, and its special history. Senior Preservationist Jeff Larry explains: …
Read MorePreservation Update: A Surprise Discovery in a Window Sill
It’s fair to say that if there wasn’t a rainstorm and a slanted sill (more on that later), we wouldn’t have found these invaluable artifacts. Senior Preservationist Jeff Larry explains: Every once in a while we uncover some interesting items typically associated with the many different uses of the Cottage by the Soldiers’ Home. These two items were found the first …
Read MorePreservation Update: Happy 175th Birthday, Cottage!
In recognition of the Cottage turning 175 years old this summer our Senior Preservationist, Jeff Larry, looks back on the Cottage’s early years: In 1842, noted landscape gardener and designer Andrew Jackson Downing published Cottage Residences, a widely successful and influential book promoting Gothic Revival as an architectural style that stressed the importance of simplicity and truth in design and …
Read MoreGastronomical Abe
By Rae Katherine Eighmey and Erin Mast Along with their two youngest sons, Willie and Tad, Abraham and Mary Lincoln brought their Midwestern values, habits of charity, and penchant for personal interaction to Washington. The war-challenged city would benefit. In 1862, just over a year after Abraham Lincoln’s inauguration, reporter Noah Brooks wrote that there were “a little more than …
Read MoreMary Lincoln, Devoted Wife
By Rae Katherine Eighmey and Erin Mast Along with their two youngest sons, Willie and Tad, Abraham and Mary Lincoln brought their Midwestern values, habits of charity, and penchant for personal interaction to Washington. The war-challenged city would benefit. In 1862, just over a year after Abraham Lincoln’s inauguration, reporter Noah Brooks wrote that there were “a little more than …
Read MorePresident Lincoln at the Soldiers’ Home
At the Soldiers’ Home just as at the White House, Abraham Lincoln shouldered the burdens of wartime leadership and personal and national tragedy. During this time of grief and stress, Lincoln often was described as sad, restless, and always anxious about the future of his country. One officer from the Union Light Guard stationed at the Soldiers’ Home encountered the …
Read MoreThe Cottage
On a hill overlooking downtown Washington is a cottage built for George W. Riggs around 1842. Architect John Skirving designed the house in the Gothic-Revival style popularized by A.J. Downing. In 1851, the estate was sold to the Federal Government, which purchased it in order to found a home for veteran soldiers. During the Civil War, President Lincoln lived in …
Read MoreThe Soldiers’ Home
Establishment of the “Military Asylum” The Armed Forces Retirement Home was established on March 3, 1851, when the U.S. Congress passed legislation to found “a military asylum for the relief and support of invalid and disabled soldiers of the army of the United States.” Events leading to the establishment of a military asylum had been building for a number of …
Read MoreThe Landscape
Robert Lautman, 2000 The landscape surrounding President Lincoln’s Cottage is historically significant for its association with the life of the 16th President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln. The Cottage is located on the campus of the Armed Forces Retirement Home (the AFRH—historically known by many names, including the Soldiers’ Home) in the northwest quadrant of Washington, District of Columbia. …
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