John Brockenbrough, president of the Bank of Virginia, built this gray stuccoed neoclassical mansion in 1818, designed by Robert Mills, and today you know it as the Second White House of the Confederacy. As you listen, imagine that this house served as the main executive residence of the sole President of the Confederate States of America, Jefferson Davis, from August 1861 until April 1865. After the war it passed into custodianship of the Confederate Memorial Literary Society from 1894 until 2014, when the Museum of the Confederacy merged with the American Civil War Center to form the American Civil War Museum.
In 1960 it was designated a National Historic Landmark. Your feet are on ground once called K Street, later Clay Street, in Richmond's Shockoe Hill neighborhood—later known as the Court End District—where Brockenbrough built his second private residence two blocks north of the Virginia State Capitol. He lived among notable neighbors, including U.S. Chief Justice John Marshall and Aaron Burr's defense attorney.
Today the mansion sits on the campus of Virginia Commonwealth University. The house stood two blocks north of the Virginia State Capitol and now stands within Virginia Commonwealth University's campus before you.