Woodlawn is a 126-acre estate that was originally part of George Washington’s Mount Vernon. The main Federal-style house was designed by the architect of the U.S. Capitol, Dr. William Thornton, and constructed between 1800 and 1805 as the plantation house for Washington’s nephew, Major Lawrence Lewis, and his wife, Eleanor “Nelly” Custis Lewis.
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During the Lewises’ years in residence, Woodlawn plantation comprised over 2,000 acres and was supported by scores of workers, at least 90 of whom were enslaved people of African descent. Many of those slaves were gifted by Nelly’s grandmother, Martha Washington, and other relatives.
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EST. 1805
In 1846, the Lewises’ son sold the property to Quaker families who made Woodlawn a “free labor colony,” selling lots to free Black and immigrant farmers—a tremendously controversial social experiment nearly two decades before the Emancipation Proclamation.
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