Under a cold pewter sky, on a day in the run-up to America’s 250th birthday, Doug Bradburn places his hand on a gritty beige wall of an outbuilding at George Washington’s Mount Vernon.
“Washington wanted his home to look like it was made of stone, which was the preferred building material of the day,” says Bradburn, Mount Vernon’s president and CEO. “So the wood panels were painted, and they threw sand at them to create the look of stone.” He gestures at the magnificent Washington home just steps away, its exterior freshly lined entirely with the faux rustication. “We’ve redone the whole mansion this way.”
The redo is being undertaken for America’s 250th birthday as part of the mansion’s $40 million renovation, which will restore it to as close to its authentic 18th-century status as it’s seen since the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association took it over in 1860. The foundation has been shored up, its floors renovated, original paint colors identified and applied, wallpaper meticulously recreated, frames of original artworks re-gilded.
The most arresting work of the semiquincentennial restoration may be in the redone Washington bedroom, where the bed, in which the first president died of a throat infection on Dec. 14, 1799, stands. Draped in white, appearing not quite big enough for a man standing 6 feet 2 inches, the bed vividly conveys that this home, this room, this very spot, is where one of the giants of America’s first 250 years lived and died.
It’s not just the mansion and grounds that have been updated for the nation’s biggest birthday in two generations. Bradburn is especially enthusiastic about the Education Center, which has been completely reimagined for today’s audiences. He opens the door leading into the center, a wide, colorful hall with exhibits on both sides. The presentation is organized around seven of Washington’s leadership traits: ambition, honor, perseverance, humility, ingenuity, vision, and wisdom. Each includes a single large image, a dynamic media screen above, a case full of artifacts, and wall text. Lifesize sculptures populate the displays.
“People learn in different ways,” Bradburn says. “We’ve figured out what works and what doesn’t over the years, and tried to apply those lessons here.”
Bradburn hopes that for Mount Vernon’s visitors in America’s birthday year—he expects around a million of them—it’s about more than a restored mansion and Great Man storytelling. Bradburn, a historian by training, is looking past July 4.
“There’s an epic, generational transformation in leadership coming in the next few years,” he says, with Baby Boomers ceding influence to rising generations. “2026 gives us a huge opportunity for civic renewal.
“The legacy of 1776 is that we are the ones governing ourselves,” he says. “The legacy of 2026 can be that we get to choose our own future together.”
Featured photo of Doug Bradburn by Kyle LaFerriere. This article originally appeared in the June 2026 issue.
