What to See in DC and Nearby

Sunday, August 3, 2014

Dumbarton House

The Dumbarton name turns up in a number of places in Georgetown and it has a Scottish connection. In 1703 a tall red-haired Scotsman, Ninian Beall was granted nearly 800 acres in Maryland by the Assembly for his efforts in helping protect the colonists against the Indians. He decided to call the land, some of which now makes up Georgetown, the Rock of Dumbarton, after an area near his home in Scotland. Dumbarton Oaks, nearby in Georgetown, is a research library, museum and garden run by the Trustees for Harvard University.

Dumbarton House, Washington DC

Dumbarton House is a historic house museum that is also the headquarters for the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America. In 1799 Samuel Jackson built the Federal style house, which was then sold to Joseph Nourse, one of America’s first career civil servants, in 1804. The next owner Charles Carroll hosted Dolley Madison for a short time when the British marched on Washington in 1814.

Later in 1915, the house had to be moved about 100 feet north because of the building of the Dumbarton Bridge and connecting it to the street in Georgetown. Dumbarton House was opened as a museum to the public in 1932.

The current entrance to the house has been created by joining the separate kitchen to the front east side of the house. There’s a front desk and some displays with information about the early owners of the house.

Tours are self-guided and the first floor rooms are beautifully furnished with period pieces. This includes a 1791 Charles Wilson Peale painting of Navy Secretary’s Benjamin Stoddard’s three children. The setting was not far away in Georgetown and in the background is the Potomac River and what is now called Roosevelt Island. It’s one of the earlier artistic depictions of Georgetown. There’s a handout available at the front desk with more information about the furnishings and the staff is very helpful with answering questions about the house and its history.

The upstairs rooms are used for exhibit space. One is dedicated to the history of the Colonial Dames, and currently there is one on the War of 1812 with a dress that belonged to Dolley Madison and in another room artwork of several generations of the Nourse family.

The architects in the Federal period had an interest in circles and ovals and this idea shows up on the back side of Dumbarton House. The rooms on the back side of the house actually bow out. This is plainly obvious when looking at the back side of the house from the yard where the brick walls clearly curve out on both sides of the symmetrical design.

Dumbarton House holds numerous public programs during the year which can be viewed at the official website.

If you don’t live there or close by, visiting Georgetown requires making a little extra effort, but exploring has its own rewards.

Links: Dumbarton House

National Society of the Colonial Dames of America

Friday, July 25, 2014

Ford's Theater

Just a few blocks north of the National Mall is one of the most historically significant buildings in Washington that didn’t start out as a government structure. And the events there changed the course of American history.

Ford's Theatre, Washington DC

Ford’s Theatre was originally the First Baptist Church of Washington built in 1833. When the congregation moved to a new facility, John T. Ford bought the building and renovated it to create a theater. It was destroyed by fire in 1862 and Ford reopened in 1863. It was on April 14th, 1865 when the first assassination of a U.S. President took place when John Wilkes Booth shot President Lincoln.

The government paid Ford $100,000 for the theater which eventually became a clerk’s office. In June of 1893 the building collapsed killing 22 clerks. It was designated a National Historic Site in 1932 and restored as a working theater and museum in 1968. Photographs taken in the 1860's by Matthew Brady were invaluable in the restoration. Another renovation took place in recent years with an opening in February of 2009.

Visitors will need a ticket to get into the theater and they are purchased for a certain time period with different options based on the time and the options. There is a museum in the basement, so tickets that include the museum will allow visitors down into the basement level. The museum deals with Lincoln’s Presidency, the Civil War, and the assassination with wall text, photographs, videos and artifacts. One of the most significant is John Wilkes Booth derringer.

From the museum, the theater is accessed by a stairs and a hallway. The theater has been restored to its 1860’s appearance except for the Victorian-style folding chairs (there would have been movable chairs in 1865) and the modern stage lighting fixtures in the ceiling. A few items, near the President’s box are original. Again depending on the ticket, visitors may get a park ranger talk in the theater. On the day that I went a ranger did a short one-man play as Boston Corbett, man that shot and killed Booth, relating his recollection of the events of the assassination the manhunt to track Booth down. Audio guides are also available with additional information about both the museum and the theater.

All visitors can then cross the street to visit the Petersen House which is where Lincoln was taken after the assassination and laid in bed. The front rooms and bedroom have been furnished to appear as they did on the night of the assassination.

Then going from the bedroom visitors step into an elevator and go into the Center for Education and Leadership. In that building are exhibits dealing with Lincoln’s funeral, the train that carried his body back to Springfield and Lincoln’s historic legacy. The last thing visitors see coming down to the first floor and the exit is the Lincoln book tower. At 34 feet (three and a half stories) it represents the fact that an enormous number of books, some 15,000, have been written about Lincoln over the years. The “books” in the tower are actually made from aluminum with the cover art of numerous titles printed on to the metal.

Depending on the calendar there is also a walking tour on the streets around Ford’s Theatre and a one-act play in the early evening called One Destiny. In the theater season there are nighttime stage performances of plays and musicals. During my visit one of the One Destiny actors mentioned that he found some comfort in realizing that before he died, Lincoln would have been laughing at the comedy he had come to see, knowing that the nightmare his country had been facing was over.

It’s a sobering visit but helps us get a better understanding the momentous events of April 1865.

Links: Official Site of Ford's Theatre

Ford's Theatre You Tube Channel

Monday, July 21, 2014

Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial

The most recent addition to the monuments on the Mall is the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial. It is the most substantial memorial to a non-President and African-American on the Mall in Washington. Dr. King was the most significant figure in America’s Civil Rights movement of the 1950’s and 60’s and may have written and delivered the most historically significant and well-known public speech of the 20^th century. He was the youngest winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 and a U.S. federal holiday was established in his name in 1986.

Martin Luther King Memorial, DC

The monument sits on the Tidal Basin which is the small lake just to the south of the Mall. The statue of King faces the Jefferson Memorial and its back faces the Lincoln Memorial. Cherry trees had to be moved to accommodate the memorial, which are in bloom yearly around the date of Dr. King’s assassination on April 4. The King statue is not looking directly at the Jefferson Memorial, but his folded arms and serious facial expression seem be saying to Jefferson “You said all men are created equal, didn’t you?’

What visitors see when they come to the monument depends on the direction one comes from. Coming from the Lincoln Memorial on foot one sees white “mountains” and walks between them. When coming from the Smithsonian Metro, or from around the Jefferson Memorial side of the Tidal Basin visitors will see the thirty foot King statue and the inscription walls with fourteen quotes by King and “mountain” sculptures behind and on each side of the statue.

King’s head and torso, clad in a business suit, are clearly defined, while his legs appear to be coming out of the stone. His facial expression is serious, his arms are folded and he holds a rolled up piece of paper in his left hand.

The idea for the memorial comes from the “I Have a Dream” speech. One of the quotes from the speech is “Out of the mountain of despair, a stone of hope.” That quote is etched on to one side of the King sculpture. On the other side was another quote, “I was a drum major for justice, peace and righteousness” It was determined that since the quote was inaccurate, it was removed in August of 2013. There are no plans to replace it.

The Wikipedia page for the Memorial has an overview of the various controversies surrounding the monument’s creation. This article from The Atlantic in 2013 addresses some the artistic and design criticism.

The inspiration to create the memorial came from the efforts of the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity to erect a monument to King. He had been a member while he was attending Boston University. The design by ROMA Design Group, based in San Francisco was selected out of 900 candidates and they chose the Chines sculptor Lei Yixin. The two “mountains” and one “stone” are actually made up of 159 distinct pieces of granite that were carved in China, shipped to DC and then put together on the Mall.

The monument was dedicated on October 16, 2011, which included a keynote speech by President Obama.

Links: Official Site of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial
Wikipedia page for the memorial
The Atlantic article
You Tube clip about the memorial

Saturday, July 12, 2014

Fort Stevens and Battleground National Cemetery

Washington DC did actually have one Civil War battle during July 11-12, 1864. The Battle of Ft. Stevens was relatively small by the standards of the day, but it had the distinction of having Abraham Lincoln visit the battle while it was taking place. This made him the only sitting President to be fired upon by a hostile army. It also represented the last effort on the part of the Confederacy to attack the Union capital.

Fort Stevens, Washington D.C.

Fort Stevens is six miles north of the National Mall. And the fact that there isn’t a great deal to see there, it’s not what one would call a “must see” destination Washington except for the more serious Civil War buffs. What’s unusual about the site is that it now sits in the middle of a very urbanized area of densely packed single family homes. The recently vacated Walter Reed Army Medical Center is just to the North of the fort and sits on much of the land where the Confederate forces where aligned during the battle. In 1864 the area was all farmland.

What visitors will see are some significant earthworks with wooden defensive walls and several large reproduction Civil War era cannons. Towards the central part of the wooden ramparts is a piece of granite with a bronze bas-relief plaque commemorating Lincoln having come under fire during his visit.

Starting after the Northern defeat at First Manassas, the Union military got serious about defending Washington from a potential Confederate attack. Over the course of the war, the military constructed 68 forts in a ring around Washington. Eighteen of the sites of these forts and one cemetery (with Fort Stevens dead) are administered by the National Park Service. They are called the the Civil War Defenses of Washington by the National Park Service. Five other fort locations are administered by local governments: one in Maryland and four in Virginia.

In the summer of 1864 U.S. Grant was starting to pin the Confederate Army along a line from Richmond to Petersburg in Virginia. In an effort to relieve some of the pressure on his army and to make another invasion attempt, Robert E. Lee sent Jubal Early with 20,000 Confederate soldiers into Maryland with a plan to attack Washington. Early’s troops defeated a smaller Union force at Monocacy in Maryland on July 9 and were nearing Fort Stevens on the 11^th. Union officers collected up wounded soldiers, clerks and anyone they could find to help bolster the troops at the forts and Grant scrambled to send troops from Virginia when he realized that the Washington forts needed more manpower.

Lincoln visited Fort Stevens and the story from the battle is that some officer yelled something like “get down you fool” to Lincoln when the shooting started. The story wasn’t written down until the 1920’s so historians are not convinced it actually happened. Early realized that the Washington forts were more heavily defended than he anticipated, called off his attack and headed back to Virginia. There were some 700 casualties combined.

When visiting Fort Stevens, one should also make the short walk to the Battleground National Cemetery, which is about 5 blocks north on Georgia Avenue. 40 Union dead from the Ft. Stevens conflict are buried there and there are several larger monuments from units that participated in Washington’s defense.

Links: National Park Service Fort Stevens site

NPS Civil War Defenses of Washington site

NPS Battleground National Cemetery site