
Washington’s Birthday and Washington’s View
by Wilton Corkern, President In 1793 George Washington wrote that, “No estate in United America is more pleasantly situated than this.” Three years later the noted architect, Benjamin Henry Latrobe, painted the “situation” that so pleased our first president. His watercolors show a lush, pastoral landscape on the Maryland side of the Potomac. Fortunately for us and for posterity that landscape as seen from Mount Vernon has changed relatively little from what Latro