As a local, I do my best to avoid tourists and the usual D.C. sights, except when showing visitors around. However, I’m discovering that there are a great number of historic and cultural sights that are just as amazing as the ones flocked by tourists each day, but these are not as well known or well visited (read: no busloads of middle school students shoving or shouting). In my continuing effort to learn new things, really experience all D.C. has to offer, and check a few things off my Sweater List, I’ve been touring several of the grand, old mansions in the area. Last week I visited Hillwood, Dumbarton Oaks, and Woodlawn. The history, culture, and lifestyles of the individuals who lived in these homes are fascinating, and I learned a lot. I’ll share a little of what I learned below, but you’ll have to be sure to add these places to your list of things to do in D.C., with or without your out-of-town guests.

Hillwood
Home to Marjorie Merriweather Post, heiress to the Post Cereal and General Foods fortunes. With her millions, she began collecting French decorative arts in the 1920s and later Russian art, which makes up most of her collection today and includes two gorgeous Faberge eggs. Mrs. Post and her third husband, a U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union, lived in Moscow in the late 1930s. She purchased Hillwood in 1955 to showcase all her treasures.

The Hillwood gardens are also an amazing sight. There are at least four distinct garden “rooms”, separate cutting gardens and green houses to furnish the house with flowers, and a putting green. The sweeping back lawn was very Great Gadsby.  I expected to see Daisy and Gadsby hosting a garden party, with music and dancing and twinkling lights in the trees at night. The staff at Hillwood encourages you to linger in the gardens—relax, read a book, just sit and savor the environment.

Fun Facts:
#1—Mrs. Post added a movie theater, more elegantly referred to as the Pavilion, to the house when she first moved in. The formal couches and armchairs have hidden pop-up trays for snacks, and they can be moved to the wall to accommodate after-dinner dancing in the room as well. However, to protect her precious wood floor, Mrs. Post provided rubber tips for women’s high-heels.
#2—Among Mrs. Post’s displayed jewelry were several Cartier pieces, and a short story about how the Cartier Fifth Ave. building in New York was purchased with a double strand of pearls. (That must have been one amazing necklace!)
#3—Her personal closets held only two weeks worth of clothes at a time. It’s not that they couldn’t hold more, but that’s just the way it was done at Hillwood. A maid would regularly change out Mrs. Post’s wardrobe with clothes that were stored in the attic.

Dumbarton Oaks
Mildred and Robert Bliss purchased Dumbarton Oaks in 1920 and began designing the elaborate gardens a year later. The house is not open to guests, but there is a small museum on the grounds. Mildred’s gardens are the real showpiece at Dumbarton Oaks, and in all honesty, I would skip the museum unless you are truly enamored with Byzantine and Pre-Columbian artifacts.

The garden has close to 20 separate “rooms”, including a rose garden, fountain terrace, Lovers’ Lane pool, pebble garden, lilac circle, and growing and cutting gardens. This is a place you want to slowly wander and explore. I felt as if I should have been reading Emerson or Thoreau as I sat on one of the garden benches and seriously contemplating the natural world around me. I got lost in the scenery, emerging hours later feeling as if I’d spent the afternoon in the countryside, yet I was still in the heart of Georgetown.

Woodlawn
Originally part of Mount Vernon, the property for Woodlawn was a gift from George Washington to his nephew, Lawrence Lewis, and Eleanor “Nelly” Custis for their wedding. The house was designed around 1803 by the architect of the Capitol, William Thornton. From the back porch of Woodlawn, you can see Mount Vernon on a hill in the distance.

My guide was excellent at not only telling me how Nelly used each room, about the architecture and artifacts, and about the notable visitors to the house (including Andrew Jackson, Robert E. Lee, and George Washington, of course), but she also painted a clear picture of how life in general was lived during this time period. I could almost see Nelly hosting a dinner party in the front dining room, showing off her prized possessions, then adjourning with the ladies to the sitting room next door, where candlelight would give the butter yellow room a soft, warm glow. The upstairs chambers were properly filled with small dining tables and desks, and no one would think ill of you if you took your breakfast in your room and spent the entire day reading, only emerging for supper at 4pm. (Ignoring the usual hardships of the time, this sounds like my kind of life!)

Fun Fact: Every genteel southern lady should have 14 dining chairs. (I’m only up to six. I suppose I still have work to do before I become a proper southern lady.)

On the grounds of Woodlawn, the National Trust for Historic Preservation has also re-located Frank Lloyd Wright’s Pope-Leighey House. The home was originally built in 1940 in Falls Church, Virginia, as an example of Wright’s design for affordable and modestly-sized single-family homes. It is a two bedroom, one bath, 1,200 square-foot home that originally cost $7,000. I had never toured a Frank Lloyd Wright home before this, and it was interesting to learn more about Wright’s style and philosophy. His careful attention to detail throughout this house is amazing—the line on the head of each screw matched the direction of the wood grain! I also enjoyed seeing how one, simple pattern can be multiplied, rotated, and flipped to give the appearance of an intricate design. While the natural simplicity of the Pope-Leighey House will never be my cup of tea, I can certainly appreciate Wright’s ingenuity and understand better why others are so enamored with his work.

My next discoveries and items to check off my Sweater List are some D.C. art galleries. There are so many fabulous ones in the area that I’ve just never made it around to seeing. Which are your favorites? The Phillips Collection? The Freer?

What should I tackle after the art galleries? What are some of your favorite places in D.C.?