Anderson House
Two, two museums in one
I’ve passed Anderson House on Massachusetts Avenue, just west of Dupont Circle, dozens if not hundreds of times over the years and never really thought about what was going on behind those massive wooden doors. Then an interview with CNN’s Abby Phillip about her new biography of Jesse Jackson sent me looking for more about her own story and out popped the morsel that she’d gotten married at Anderson House back in 2018. Not that I’m a huge Abby Phillip fan and not that I’m looking for wedding venues, but somehow it just clicked that this was a place that I needed to visit.
Larz Anderson, described by Wikipedia as “American diplomat and bon vivant,” made his fortune the old fashioned way: he inherited it. His wife, Isabel, was the issue of two fancy Boston families, Perkins and Weld, and inherited $5 million (roughly $159 million in today’s dollars) from her grandfather while still a toddler. Married in 1897, the pair spent their years together traveling the globe and acquiring a lot of stuff displayed throughout the home from Italian altarpieces to Japanese paintings. While Larz was wining and dining as a diplomat in Europe (he served as high ranking official in London and Rome before becoming ambassador to Belgium during the Taft Administration), Isabel put on parties and wrote a bunch of books and plays, none of which are remembered today.
A visit to Anderson House provides a split screen experience: part Gilded Age mansion and part homage to the men who fought the Revolutionary War and became members of the Society of Cincinnati which is housed here. Anderson was a member of the society and having no heirs, he donated the house to the society at his death.
If you have no idea what the Society of Cincinnati is, you’re not alone because its ranks are quite modest. The original members in 1783 were commissioned officers in Continental service who had served to the end of the American Revolution and those who had resigned with honor after a minimum of three years’ service as a commissioned officer. Membership was also offered to the admirals and commanders of the French navy and the generals and colonels of the French army in recognition of France’s role in America’s victory. Today, the society’s members are for the most part the male descendants of these men. There are some complicated exceptions that I won’t bore you with, but the bottom line is that membership is limited to one person descending from each eligible officer. As such, it’s a more exclusive club than the Daughters of the American Revolution or other such American institutions and I suppose that’s part of its cachet.
The day I visited, a member of the Society joined the tour, sharing that he was in town for a Society business meeting and staying with his fellow Cincinnatians in one of 13 bedrooms on the upper floors, one for each of the original colonies. He was busting his buttons with pride, showing us the medal he wears at official functions, more modest than the diamond encrusted medal featured in one of the display cases. I asked him what the business of the Society was and he answered that it included maintenance of the building, philanthropy, and education about the Revolutionary War.
In addition to an exhibit hall now featuring a show about the first year of the war (which ends in early January), the building is also home of the American Revolution Institute which holds some 50,000 items such as letters, broadsides, maps, and other print materials plus artwork, medals, armaments, and the like. My tour guide shooed us out the door before we could peruse the exhibit and I was already too tired to insist on staying. If you want to know more, go to historian Michael Auslin’s Substack, The Patowmack Packet. Or do what I did and go home and watch all six episodes of Ken Burns’ The American Revolution on PBS. (Spoiler alert: it’s a bit of a slog, mostly because the Americans were losing until episode 6.)
Anderson House is located 2118 Massachusetts Avenue NW (Metro: Dupont Circle). It is open Tuesday through Saturday from 10 to 4 and on Sundays from noon to 4. I took the house tour but you can also just opt for the exhibition gallery for a slightly reduced fee (and reduced rates for both for DC residents). You can book online or just show up (tours start at 15 past the hour.)
I remember reading about the Society of the Cincinnati---in Chernew's Hamilton, I believe --- but had no idea it still existed. Thanks, Anne, for alerting me to another museum I did not know about! PS I agree the latest Burns documentary was a bit of a slog; in my case, because I find play-by-play descriptions of battles tedious. But in compensation, I learned quite a bit about the role of Indians, enslaved and free black people, and women in the Revolution, which was rewarding. And I hadn't really appreciated the role of land speculation as a motivating drive for cutting the colonial ties.