Location: 2118 Massachusetts Ave NW, Washington, DC 20008
Overall rating: 7/10
Ghost rating: 5/10
Would I visit again? Probably not, it's kind of one and done (unless I went to one of the free events)
Freebies: So many brochures and a booklet of the whole exhibit
This is a follow-up post to my first visit to the Larz Anderson House, so if you are interested in the history of the house/the exhibit information, visit here for that. I'll be mostly talking about the touring experience that I missed out on last time. In case you missed that previous post, all tours were cancelled last time I came here and I twisted my ankle so it wasn't a great experience. This time, I knew how to dodge the sidewalks (which I still think are stupid by the way) and I actually got to go on a tour.
Tours happen every 15 minutes after the hour. The one I was on started a few minutes early, so I would maybe get there a few minutes before so you don't miss anything. You start the tour in the main entrance of the building. There is a lot of walking and stairs. I think there's elevator access but I wouldn't say that this is the best place for accessibility. One couple had a stroller and instead of helping them with it, they were just like "hey, what's your plan for this?"
Since this house was only used for about 3 months during the social season, it's a house that really caters towards entertaining. Literally, there's two different entrances. One is labeled "Through this door come and welcome be all who share part in the family." The other says "Through this door come and welcome be our friends and guests most cordially." It's a fancy way of saying "one way is for family, one way is for others. Stay out of our sh*t."
We ended up taking the family route and kind of working backwards through the house with how it would be for a guest to visit the house. We started by talking about the Society of the Cincinnati and what that group does. It was essentially post-Revolutionary War, all these men were like we can't exchange friendship bracelets but Revolutionary War life forever, dude? And then they made like a little frat. It sounds like to me that you can still be part of the Society of the Cincinnati if you have relatives who fought in the Revolutionary War (Americans or French) but it still seems to be male-only, which is freaking crazy. Like even the Boy Scouts allow girls, grow up. It just seems a little close-minded to me especially when they explained that the organization was created to remember the men and women who served the country. And Isabel Anderson (who owned the house) said women had a right to die for their country. I don't know. I just have beef with it. The Society of the Cincinnati is supposed to be teaching and remembering the Revolutionary War. Like call me when you get to Felicity Merriman of the American Girls level, ok?
Since the house boasts that they are one of the biggest collectors of artifacts from the American Revolution, I kind of expected that to be the focus of the tour. But I don't know if we saw a single artifact. Really, the tour was just about Larz and Isabel Anderson being nepo babies... It was a little bit insufferable. And there were so many Buddhas everywhere to the point where it was like, okay, you need to stop stealing Asian culture.
LIKES:
- The house: Rich people being rich is insufferable, but they do make great homes. There's some seriously beautiful architecture here, inspired by the English and French. The gold detail in this home is insane. And they had one of the first floating staircases. It's just stunning.
- The tour: Our tour guide was super knowledgeable and shared a lot of great stories. The building works well as a tour space because it essentially tells the story of the family. The Andersons were not... subtle people so they have like 5 different murals all about their life story. That makes it really easy to explain who they are and what their values are.
- The hidden Mickeys: These people hid little insignias with I and L (for Isabel and Larz) all over their house, especially in murals and in the ceilings as papier-mâché. It's kind of like the hidden Mickeys at Disney World except not like that at all.
- Music: Since I had to kill time in the exhibit again before the tour, I can say that the instrumental music slaps.
DISLIKES:
- The tour: I don't think it's the tour guide's fault that these people are just kind of insufferable, but I just felt like some of it was over-the-top. Like how do you get through this without rolling your eyes? The Andersons seemed to be people who thought they were very, very important, but they weren't super important? They were in the social scene but mostly because they kind of bought their way into it. But these people were WILD. There's a mural of George Washington, Lafayette, and other people during the Revolutionary War and the Andersons PAINTED THEMSELVES IN AS ANGELS. The whole vibe was just very "pick me."
- The door: The door is confusing to get in. I have not figured it out. I don't know if you're supposed to knock or ring the doorbell or if the door is just sticky. I would love some signage out there.
NOT TO BE MISSED:
- The birds: Isabella Anderson was crazy about her birds and there are birds EVERYWHERE. It's wild. Even outside, there are statues of owls watching over.
- The choir room: This bugged the heck out of me last time because to get to the exhibit, you go through this kind of creepy dark-wooded room that I had no explanation for what it was. Now, I do know that it's a choir room from possibly Naples in the 15th-16th century. But why move that to your house? Like that's weird, no?
Comments