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George Mason married Ann Eilbeck in April of 1750, and they settled in a home built by his father at the eastern tip of Mason Neck. The house occupied the top of a bluff overlooking the Potomac; the site was called “Dogue’s Neck” by Mason and is currently known as Sycamore Point.
Mason was an accomplished surveyor and in 1754 he carried out an extensive survey of Mason Neck in preparation for the planning of a new house and garden. After selecting the site, surveying it, and consulting available garden books, Mason maped out the plan for his estate. Mason might have chosen a number of fine home sites upon his vast plantations, but he selected a site he had known since childhood, a few hundred yards from the house built by his grandfather in 1694.
Mason's design for Gunston’s landscape is an important example of 18th-century American architecture. He placed major elements in a linear sequence leading from the entry gate on the northwest boundary, to the edge of the plateau on the southeast. Mason shaped the spaces in between with carriage roads, paths, buildings, banks of trees, and open vistas in an ingenious fashion. Unfortunately, much of Mason’s original landscape plan was altered or obliterated during the 19th and 20th centuries. During the last ten years, however, researchers have worked to determine original elements of the scheme, and to recreate or restore them when possible. There have been two principal guides in this exciting process of discovery: archaeological excavation and the written “Recollections” of John Mason, Mason’s son, who describes the appearance of the plantation at the time of his childhood. Slowly, George Mason’s original landscape is taking shape.
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