Reading this week:

• Tram 83 by Fiston Mwanza Mujila

Last weekend, on a gorgeous day, my super amazing girlfriend and I went to go visit the Carlyle House. The Carlyle House is an absolutely lovely little historical house/park run by Northern Virginia parks located here in our new hometown of Alexandria, VA. It is also the former home of John Carlyle, a wealthy early Alexandrian who showed off to everybody by building the first stone house in Alexandria. It used to be on a riverfront property, but now it fronts Lee Street, which I am a little stunned hasn’t been renamed by this point.

The house tour is pretty great and at $5 it’d be a bargain at twice the price. Besides it’s age, it’s claim to fame is being the site of the Congress of Alexandria, when some colonial governors got together to talk about how to fight the French and Indian War. The house itself has been through a lot in the intervening years, though I found it very interesting that the room pictured above, which held the congress, had been reserved as a tourist destination throughout most of its existence, even while the rest of the house was tenements.

Our redcoated mannequin friend above is meant to represent Major General Edward Braddock. Our main man Ed here called the congress when he was sent to prosecute the aforementioned French and Indian War. The congress happened in Carlyle’s House because Ed had, upon arriving in Alexandria, promptly quartered himself in the finest house in town, ie Carlyle’s. The running theme of much of the house tour is that John Carlyle would become (according to the totally unbiased tour guides at Carlyle House) an important and instrumental patriot in the American revolution mostly because Ed Braddock was a massive asshole and terrible houseguest. This is the nitty-gritty, people-centric type of history I do love to see.

Speaking of people, another aspect I liked about the house tour is that I think they approached presenting the history of slavery on the site very well. Slavery was presented as an integral part of the history of the house, instead of an addendum, and unlike some other places they didn’t feel the need to pat themselves on the back for doing the bare minimum. As you can see on the sign pictured above (far from the only one, I promise), the museum gave the names of enslaved persons when possible and treated them as their own people. As I just described in the preceding two paragraphs and unsurprising in a place named “Carlyle House,” they’re still doing a version of Great Man history, but we’re getting to a better place I think.

And, uh, yeah. That’s about what I have to say about the place. They also have some very lovely and I think ahistorical gardens in the back, but they’re nice to walk through and you don’t have to pay the admission fee to do so. My super amazing girlfriend and I are excited to be settling into our new home of Alexandria and are trying to make sure we explore around here instead of only being drawn (as loyal readers of the blog have seen and will see again) the wonderful Smithsonians on offer up in DC. We gotta embrace our new identities as Virginians!