Open 365 days a year, Mount Vernon is located just 15 miles south of Washington DC.
From the mansion to lush gardens and grounds, intriguing museum galleries, immersive programs, and the distillery and gristmill. Spend the day with us!
Discover what made Washington "first in war, first in peace and first in the hearts of his countrymen".
The Mount Vernon Ladies Association has been maintaining the Mount Vernon Estate since they acquired it from the Washington family in 1858.
Need help with homework? Our Digital Encyclopedia has all of the answers students and teachers need.
The Washington Library is open to all researchers and scholars, by appointment only.
Uncovering secrets in Mount Vernon's image collection with Dawn Bonner, the Washington Library’s manager of visual resources.
Ever since the earliest known photograph of the Mount Vernon Mansion was taken in 1850, the estate has been a popular pilgrimage site for photo enthusiasts. To better track and catalog more than 160 years’ worth of images, the George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon has developed an extensive historical photograph and film archive,
housing everything from 1850s stereographs to a film collection dating from the 1920s. As the Washington Library’s manager of visual resources, Dawn Bonner is responsible for managing this ever-growing collection, as well as for making it accessible to the public.
“I assist employees across the entire estate when they need pictures for internal and external use,” said Dawn, describing how she earned the nickname, “the picture lady.”
Over time, and with the development of new technology, the process Dawn uses to share images has changed drastically. When she began as the administrative assistant in Mount Vernon’s Collections Department in 2001, she made copies of film slides for presentations on slide projectors. As digital photography and Internet usage gained widespread traction, Dawn’s work evolved seemingly overnight.
With these new advancements came new ways to share the collection, and Dawn has become responsible for building an online database of the Washington Library’s holdings that is available online in the Digital Collections in the Washington Library. Thanks to ongoing digitization efforts, new content is continually being added. For each image digitized, Dawn must carefully scan the hard copy, taking care with fragile originals, and manually input a detailed description, including the photographer, date, and subjects to make it easier to find in a search.
This article originally appeared in Mount Vernon magazine, published three times a year by the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association.
Stereographs, such as this 19th-century color photomechanical print of the Mansion, make up a large portion of Mount Vernon’s earliest photographs. When viewed through a stereoscope, the two images create the illusion of a three-dimensional image. (MVLA)
Join Dawn Bonner, the Washington Library’s manager of visual resources, and Rebecca Baird, archivist, as they discuss the stories behind some of the estate’s famous sightseers and why Mount Vernon continues to lure people of all backgrounds and cultures.
