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Color photograph of flag at half-staff at Arlington National Cemetery
Color photograph of flag at half-staff at Arlington National Cemetery

Color photograph of flag at half-staff at Arlington National Cemetery

Object number2004.042.0001
DateJanuary 1964
ClassificationsPhotographs
Photographer Lonny Smith
ObjectPhotograph (color)
Credit LineLonny Smith Collection/The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza
MediumPaper
Dimensions3 1/4 × 4 11/16 in. (8.3 × 11.9 cm)
Collections
DescriptionColor photographic print of the American flag at half-staff in front of Arlington House at Arlington National Cemetery. Image taken by Lonny Smith in January 1964 when he visited the gravesite of President John F. Kennedy. In the foreground, patches of snow lie on the hill and a small group of people in the bottom right corner. Another small group of people is standing at the top of the hill to the left of Arlington House in the image near the trees.
Curatorial Commentary

Arlington House, formerly called the Custis-Lee Mansion, was completed between 1804 and 1817 by the Custis family (built on the orders of George Washington Parke Custis, the step-grandson and adopted son of President George Washington). Future Confederate General Robert E. Lee, whose mother was cousin to the Custis family, visited the home frequently growing up and was married at the mansion in 1831. Although they traveled frequently, the Lees considered the mansion their home for three decades.

During the Civil War, the property was seized for the nonpayment of taxes and formally purchased by the U.S. government in 1864 for $26,800. In June of that year, U.S. Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton approved of the establishment of Arlington National Cemetery, utilizing 200 acres of the estate. The Custis-Lee Mansion was restored in the 1920s, and in 1955, the house was named a memorial to General Robert E. Lee. In 1972, by act of Congress, the manor was officially designated Arlington House, the Robert E. Lee Memorial.

In 1939, a two-thirds scale replica of Arlington House was built in a park in Dallas then known as Robert E. Lee Park. Ironically, the Kennedy motorcade passed by this house at the corner of Lemmon Avenue and Turtle Creek Boulevard. Decades later, filmmaker Oliver Stone used the Dallas replica for the sequences of his 1991 film JFK that were set at Kennedy's gravesite at Arlington National Cemetery.  Today that park is called Oak Lawn Park. -- Stephen Fagin, Curator