July 2011

The Cabildo was the seat of colonial government in New Orleans, Louisiana; declared a National Historic Landmark in 1960, it is now the home of the Louisiana State Museum. The building—which had been both the site of the Louisiana Purchase Transfer and the home of the Louisiana Supreme Court which handed down the ruling on Plessy v. Ferguson—was severely damaged by fire in 1988, but was restored using authentic French timber framing technology.

The Cabildo now stands, having suffered only minor damage from Hurricane Katrina, as a monument to Louisiana’s state history and national importance, featuring exhibits from its colonial era to the War of 1812’s Battle of New Orleans to the end of the Reconstruction.

Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington County, Virginia is a military cemetery established during the American Civil War on the grounds of Arlington House. Veterans and military casualties from each of the nation’s wars are interred in the cemetery, from the American Civil War through military actions in Afghanistan and Iraq, with pre-Civil War dead having been reinterred after 1900.

Arlington House was formerly the estate of the family of Confederate general Robert E. Lee's wife Mary Anna Lee, a great grand-daughter of Martha Washington, and it stands today as a memorial to Lee as administered by the National Park Service.