Lancaster County Timber Frames was recently selected to execute the timber framing for the Fred W. Smith National Library for the Study of George Washington and for the adjacent Scholar’s Residence in Mount Vernon, VA. LCTF expects to be on site early this summer. There is a virtual walk-through of the new building at www.mountvernon.org/educational-resources/library/fsnl.

The following is a press release from the foundation funding the project:

‘The library, to be built primarily through a major donation from the Las Vegas-based Donald W. Reynolds Foundation, will house 87 books owned by Washington and 500 letters and ledgers bearing his writing as well as books about him and 2,500 rare books from the 18th and 19th centuries.’

‘Mount Vernon trustees said that when it opens in 2013, the center should be a focal point for research into the first president and hopefully will help revive interest in a giant they fear is fading in the nation’s collective memory.’

‘The groundbreaking was held on the anniversary of the date in 1989 when a courier arrived at Mount Vernon to notify the Revolutionary War general of his selection as the first president of the United States. Two days later Washington left for New York City, where he was inaugurated on April 30’

‘”George Washington wanted a library. He wrote that he wanted a library, and it’s taken one heck of a long time,” said Gay Hart Gaines, Florida regent of the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association, which owns and maintains the estate. “George Washington is the man without whom quite simply we would not have become a country, and we all know that.”‘