Virtual Tour

Take a peek at the interior of the historic house and some of the intriguing items in the collection.

Schedule a visit and discover some of the stories behind the items featured on this tour as well as other objects on display.

Historic House

In 1805 Thomas and Martha Parke Custis Peter purchased Tudor Place. The Peters then asked their friend, the self-taught architect Dr. William Thornton (1759-1828), to design a home for the property.

A typical Federal-period home, the floor plan reflects a pronounced public-private divide.  For example, Peter family guests would enter the house through the double doors of the north entry into the Vestibule. Within the Vestibule, double doors to the left open to the main staircase and bedrooms above, while matching doors to the right lead to the service wing of the house. Few guests would ever have seen these utilitarian and private spaces.

In the early American republic, the founding generation consciously chose to associate the nation with the ancient democracies of Greece and the republican values of Rome. Using Roman architectural vocabulary, the Federal style applied to the balanced and symmetrical version of Georgian architecture that had been practiced in the American colonies’ new motifs of neoclassical architecture, which was epitomized in Britain by Robert Adam, who published his designs in 1792.

Today the rooms appear as they did during the period of the last owners, Armistead Peter 3rd and his wife, Caroline, who displayed new furnishings alongside the inherited objects of six generations who lived here from 1805-1983.