Virginia Bacon and DACOR Bacon House as Center Stage for the "Washington Salon"
Date/Time
5/14/2025 12:00 PM - 2:30 PM Eastern
Sponsors
Event Type(s)
DACOR Bacon House Bicentennial
Event Description
Join us at this bicentennial celebration luncheon and program that will discuss the last private owner of the DACOR Bacon House and her salons. Presenters will include Elizabeth Warner, DACOR Bacon House Secretary and Archivist, and Terry Walz, Historian, DACOR Bacon House.
Virginia Bacon was a celebrated salonniere in Washington for some 50 years until her death in 1980. She invited the full range of Washington movers and shakers in the diplomatic, political and cultural arenas to dinners and teas at the house. In doing so, she followed a long tradition of social interaction undertaken by owners of the bouse. In the nineteenth century, Mrs. William T. Carroll was a much-loved hostess of many receptions, soirees dansantes, Christmas open houses, and garden parties, making the house almost as well-known as its neighbor, the White House. Her successor, Mollie Fuller, wife of the chief justice of the United States, followed suit, holding yearly receptions attended by as many as 600, special dinners for newly appointed associate justices, and weekly “at homes” in the tradition of socially prominent Washington women. In the twentieth century, Ruth and Medill McCormick, who rented the house in the years 1919-1923, popularized the Sunday “buffet” dinner in the house, then a new way of entertaining lawmakers and their wives. Thus Mrs. Bacon inherited a long tradition of making DACOR Bacon House a salon of renown.
Location
Setting: Hybrid DACOR Bacon House OR Online 1801 F Street, NW Washington, DC 20006 UNITED STATES
