Washington Slept Here, Now Keep Moving
 House Proud 
A belated salute to the Washington Post’s Philip Kennicott, who July 4th shared with readers his meditations on America and the world’s obsession with replicating homes of the great and the good, or at least George Washington.  
Mount Vernon, soon to host another superfluous “Presidential Library,” holds first place in the nation’s architectural imagination, or lack thereof. Kennicott spotlights the many sad recreations of the Big House, and Lydia Mattice Brandt’s research into America’s mysterious practice of making foreigners and school children troop through replicas at half a dozen World’s Fairs and exhibitions.
We Might Be Giants    
Current star practitioner of this architectural ghost walking is Alan Greenberg, whose accomplishments include a toy house Mount Vernon for future Chief Executives with excess family cash, and a “flagship” store for the always strenuously patriotic Tommy Hilfiger.
Ronald Reagan exhibited some of these morbid symptoms, enjoying work at a replica of George Washington’s desk before he was president even of the Screen Actors Guild.
It’s not only the Great House.
      Kentucky proudly hosts a fake Abraham Lincoln boyhood cabin, now replicated on coins.
And an Okinawa businessman’s strange fakery compulsions could only be satisfied with a recreation of Bill Clinton’s boyhood home.
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