mortierworld: Richmond Day

Last month we had a free Saturday and decided to head to Richmond and do some exploring. We had heard good things about the White House of the Confederacy and Museum of the Confederacy (ie - that they weren't Confederate shrines) and we decided to check them out. It's kind of funny - they're squished right in the middle of Richmond between highways, hospitals and other random buildings. After a few minutes driving around, however, we managed to track them down. :)

Although the house tour guide was a little funny about Evie going on the tour, he was good and the house was very interesting. The Jefferson Davis apparently didn't believe in stifling their children's' natural, "creative" tendencies and so didn't believe in discipline. It sounds like they were quite the bad kids! Their house was beautiful, even if it sounds like it was a bit dysfunctional in real life.
No pictures were allowed inside, but here we are outside.
Out back...

In the front... not quite as grand (or white) as the real White House.

The museum of the confederacy was mostly interesting because of all the actual items they had. Here I am in front of Robert E Lee's tent - everything in it was really his...

And here is the sword and uniform he wore to the surrender at Appomattox!

Evelyn and Nathan liked the cannon best. :)

The Virginia Capitol is not far from the Museums so we walked over there next.

Cool buildings on our way over...

The capitol is a very large and beautiful building, originally designed by Thomas Jefferson. It was hard to get it all in one picture, but here are my attempts (there is a main, Greek temple looking building with large wing additions on either side).

This statue of George Washington by Jean-Antoine Houdon is said to be the most realistic statue that we have. Houdon came over from France and took extremely detailed notes, sketches and castes - he even covered GW's face with oil, stuck feathers in his nose so he could breathe, and made a complete plaster of his face!