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Tudor Place Garden Party Honors Tom Birch

By Robert Devaney • June 3, 2024 0 415

Tom Birch was the guest of honor at Tudor Place’s May 22 Garden Party. Photo by Tony Powell.

Tudor Place’s 32nd Annual Spring Garden Party honored Tom Birch — former advisory neighborhood commissioner and legislative counsel — for his service to the Georgetown community and as a Tudor Place volunteer.

Mark Hudson, Executive Director, and Dr. Christy Pichichero, President of the Board of Trustees, introduced Birch to the lively crowd.

The May 22 party is typically one of the last Washington’s spring season and is the institution’s most important fundraiser of the year, raising more that 20 percent of Tudor Place’s annual operating revenue. Proceeds support conservation of thousands of objects in the Tudor Place Collection & Archive, preservation of the 5 1⁄2 acre estate and dynamic educational programming for all ages. Co-chairs for this year’s event were Zoe Persina and Aimee Burck.

A long-time District resident and friend to Tudor Place, Birch has been an ambassador, member, visitor, donor and in recent years docent — giving guided tours of the historic house to visitors from around the world. A Georgetown resident, he came to Washington, D.C., in the early 1970s, earning his law degree from George Washington University.

Tudor Place is located in the heart of historic Georgetown, surrounded by 5 1/2 acres of formal and informal garden spaces. The historic house was completed in 1816 by Martha Parke Custis Peter, a granddaughter of Martha Washington, and her husband Thomas Peter. The Peter family owned Tudor Place for almost 200 years before it opened as a public museum in 1988.

Earlier this year, the historic house was reimagined to tell the stories of the enslaved and free people of African descent who lived and worked here through a special installation and guided tour “Ancestral Spaces: People of African Descent at Tudor Place.” This tour honors the memories of these individuals while expanding the traditional Tudor Place narrative, recognizing the site as a space built on the labor and presence of generations of people of African descent. The tour has extended through Oct. 13.