In Country

Michelle Galler • June 22, 2016

Here in the mid-Atlantic states the ubiquitous seashell symbolizes the arrival of summer. Wherever there was watery life there is …

Hannah Dodd •

When the stress of life reaches its brink, it’s nice to have a day away to clear your mind …

Michelle Galler • June 8, 2016

In the mid-1700s, men’s waistcoats had several pockets and it was fashionable to carry a watch in each pocket …

Richard Selden • May 5, 2016

“Historical literacy,” according to public historian and R Street resident Brent D. Glass, “is more than simply knowing the names of leaders or when famous battles were fought. It involves understanding the context of historical events and how events are connected.”

Having devoted his career to the cause of historical literacy, the director emeritus of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History decided to take action in a direct and personal way: He wrote a book.

Published this spring, Glass’s “50 Great American Places: Essential Historic Sites Across the U.S.” doesn’t read like a lecture from your American history teacher, unless you had an unusually inspiring one. In an inviting, conversational style, Glass captures some of the atmosphere of the places his entries describe.

Better yet, many of his Great American Places are well-chosen surprises.

Yes, Great American Place No. 1 is the National Mall, here in D.C. But No. 50 is “Malls of America.” Glass uses the plural because that entry covers the history of the enclosed shopping mall, from the 1956 debut of modernist architect Victor Gruen’s Southdale Center in Edina, Minnesota, to the gargantuan Mall of America, which opened in 1992 in nearby Bloomington.

Along the way, the reader gets a capsule history of suburbanization, with a cross-reference to the phenomenon’s 19th-century roots, nurtured in books like “The American Woman’s Home,” written in 1869 by Catharine Beecher and her sister Harriet Beecher Stowe (Stowe’s Hartford, Connecticut, home, along with that of her neighbor, Mark Twain, is Great American Place No. 25).

By grouping sites both geographically and thematically, Glass has written an enjoyable volume for the hammock (or the bathroom) as well as a guidebook. You may want to get one copy for the car and one to keep handy at home.

The entries between the Mall and the Malls are roughly chronological. Glass checks in at the Liberty Bell (No. 9), the Alamo (No. 18) and Pearl Harbor (No. 41, get it?), but also touches down at key spots in the history of American art, science and social change.

Famed biographer David McCullough, who met Glass — then head of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission — in 1989 at the centennial of the Johnstown Flood, calls attention in the book’s forward to the choice of a farmhouse in Red Cloud, Nebraska, as Great American Place No. 26 (“Willa Cather’s Great Prairie”):

“[Pioneer woman] Annie Pavelka and her story were the inspiration for Willa Cather’s famous masterpiece ?My Ántonia,’ and to stand there beside the storm cellar into which she rushed her children when tornadoes struck is to feel the ?power of place’ in no uncertain terms.”

As much as anyone, McCullough has shown that history doesn’t have to go down like medicine. Well-written narratives can motivate us both to want to learn more and to experience in person the places that shaped our nation. Glass’s book contains many such motivating moments, neatly packaged for 21st-century lives.

Michelle Galler •

As so aptly described by one local denizen, “Life in Little Washington reminds one of Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon or Jan Karon’s mythical Mitford.” Rappahannock County, Virginia, with its quirky villages, unspoiled scenery, outdoor activities and stellar cultural and culinary offerings, is close enough for a daytrip or a world-away weekend.

Rappahannock Central, a beautifully restored 1930s apple-packing facility in Sperryville, in the far western part of the county, is a bustling crossroads of art galleries — including the studios of River District Arts — and local shops. There is even a brewery and a distillery.

On the culinary side, Heritage Hollow Farms’ new storefront offers 100-percent ecologically farmed grass-fed and grass-finished beef, lamb and pork. Mike Peterson, a former executive sous chef in Aspen, and his wife Molly, a professional photographer who fell in love with the county’s scenery, discovered that they could work together to produce succulent food, raised with integrity. They do not use antibiotics or hormones, and their livestock live comfortable lives on healthy pasturage and non-GMO feed.

Also relatively new is Wild Roots Apothecary, which offers slow brewed, handcrafted herbal and floral syrups at its creatively earthy store. Their artisanal syrups combine Lemon-Cardamom, Elderberry-Lavender and Rosehip-Hibiscus flavors. They also offer botanical teas and locally sourced body nectars.

Known for the five-star Inn at Little Washington, the county offers other overnight accommodations — less pricey, but cozy and charming in their own ways.

Gary Aichele, that very same quoted “local denizen,” happens to run the Gay Street Inn with his wife Wendy. The 1850s farmhouse, on the edge of Little Washington, offers Shenandoah Mountain views, a relaxing stay in beautifully appointed rooms and a hearty country breakfast. The front porch and serene gardens are the perfect spots for morning coffee or afternoon wine.

Also in Little Washington, the Foster Harris House, an early-20th-century farmstead, offers high-end amenities and delicious private dining. One evening in 2004, Diane and John MacPherson decided the time was right to flee their corporate lives and open a business that combines their passions for food, wine, cycling and entertaining.

The rooms are elegant and comfortable and dinner unites the elements that inspire chef John’s culinary muse: fruits and vegetables from the rich soil of Rappahannock County, surprising flavors, bold splashes of color and family traditions. With just one seating a night in the intimate dining room, the five-course, prix-fixe menu is available by reservation for $89 per person or $129 with wine pairings (tax and gratuity not included) every Thursday, Friday and Saturday. The Foster Harris House also offers two- or five-day Tours de Epicure, as much about good food and wine as they are about pedaling through the beautiful countryside.

Just outside of town, surrounded by lush pastures with views to the Blue Ridge Mountains, sits the Middleton Inn. Built in 1840 by Middleton Miller, who designed and manufactured the Confederate uniform during the Civil War, the property is a classic country estate where your pet can be as comfortable as you are.

Even though Rappahannock County has fewer than 7,000 inhabitants, it is home to two theaters. The arts are intricately woven into the texture of the community, thanks in part to RAAC (the Rappahannock Association for the Arts and the Community). RAAC promotes a series of cultural programs throughout the year and supports the RAAC Community Theatre. May will feature playwright John Logan’s Tony Award-winning play “Red,” about egotistical genius Mark Rothko, the Abstract Impressionist painter.

Just across the street is the intimate 213-seat Theatre at Washington, Virginia, presenting an eclectic mix of musical and dramatic performances, usually on weekends. This spring’s line-up includes Grammy Award-winning acoustic guitarist Laurence Juber (June 11) and flutist Emlyn Johnson in a celebration of the centennial of Shenandoah National Park (June 17).

Listed by Trip Advisor as the number-one thing to do in Little Washington, R.H. Ballard Shop and Gallery is always stocked with unique and wonderful things to buy. The shop combines quality French textiles, great design, vintage finds and fine art. Robert Ballard, who runs the shop with his wife Joanie, is a painter who originally hails from San Francisco. He shows some of his own works in the gallery, as well as art by local, regional and nationally recognized artists.

There is always plenty do see and do in Rappahannock County, and springtime is a most beautiful time of the year for exploring the county.

Michelle Galler owns homes in Georgetown and in Washington, Virginia, and is a realtor and antiques dealer in both locales. [gallery ids="102222,130537,130532,130524,130517,130510,130562,130502,130550,130545,130556" nav="thumbs"]

Georgetowner • May 4, 2016

INNS AND B&BS

The Middleton Inn
176 Main Street, Washington 540-675-2020

The Gay Street Inn
160 Gay Street Washington 540-316-9220

The White Moose Inn
291 Main Street, Washington 540-675-3207

The Loft at the Little Washington Spa
261 Main Street, Washington 540-675-1031

Hopkins Ordinary
47 Main Street, Sperryville 540-987-3383

The Foster Harris House
189 Main Street, Washington 540-674-3757

Glen Gordon Manor
1482 Zachary Taylor Highway, Huntly 540-636-6010

Inn at Mount Vernon
206 Mount Vernon Lane, Sperryville 540-987-3165

FOR THE HUNGRY AND THIRSTY

Tula’s Off Main
311 Gay Street, Washington 540-675-2223

Thornton River Grille
3710 Sperryville Pike, Sperryville 540-987-8790

Foster Harris House
189 Main Street, Washington 540-675-3757

Flint Hill Public House
675 Zachary Taylor Highway, Flint Hill 540-675-1700

Griffin Tavern
659 Zachary Taylor Hwy, Flint Hill 540-675-3227

The Headmaster’s Pub
12018 Lee Highway, Sperryville 540-987-5008

Pen-Druid Brewery
7 River Lane, Sperryville 540-987-5064

Triple Oak Bakery
11692 Lee Highway, Sperryville 540-987-9122

24 Crows
650 Zachary Taylor Highway, Flint Hill 540-675-1111 [gallery ids="102223,130496" nav="thumbs"]

Richard Selden • April 8, 2016

A National Historic Landmark, the Seventh Regiment Armory on Manhattan’s Upper East Side made an about-face in 2007.
The one-time drill hall for New York’s aristocracy — with interiors by Tiffany, Stanford White and the Herter Brothers, among others — had become best known as a cavernous venue for high-end antiques shows.

That year, the massive brick castle became the home of Park Avenue Armory, a nonprofit that undertook the building’s restoration and began to program performances and contemporary art installations. The Royal Shakespeare Company came for six weeks one summer and the Merce Cunningham Company danced its last there. Visitors listened in the dark to “The Murder of Crows,” a sound piece by Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller; swung on giant swings amid dangling sheets at Ann Hamilton’s “The Event of a Thread”; and marveled at Paul McCarthy’s pornographic take on Snow White, “WS.”

Almost singlehandedly, the Armory has made the Upper East Side hip. (The next major installation, “Martin Creed: The Back Door,” opens June 8.) Its avant-garde events have been so successful that last year the New York Art, Antique & Jewelry Show, an annual rental of $300,000 or so, was evicted; the 2016 show will be at Pier 94 in November.

But two of the most prestigious shows of their kind in the world are still Armory tenants. The Winter Antiques Show will return in January 2017. This weekend, April 7 to 10, more than 200 of the top U.S. and international vendors of rare books, maps, manuscripts and ephemera will be at the New York Antiquarian Book Fair.

A short walk up Park Avenue from the Armory is the Asia Society Museum, between 70th and 71st streets, where “Kamakura: Realism and Spirituality in the Sculpture of Japan” is on view through May 8. The exhibition focuses on sculpture from the politically turbulent Kamakura period (1185 to 1333), when artists and their workshops were commissioned by the warrior class to create Buddhist icons of exceptional realism, power and technical excellence.

Meanwhile, the big news on the Upper East Side is the opening, last month, of the Met Breuer. With the Whitney Museum of Art in a new Renzo Piano building in the Meatpacking District (at the southern terminus of the High Line), the Metropolitan Museum of Art has taken over the old Whitney, at Madison Avenue and 75th Street, a Brutalist icon designed by Marcel Breuer.

The inaugural exhibition at what this writer calls the Metney (until I hear from both museums’ lawyers) is “Unfinished: Thoughts Left Visible,” running through Sept. 4. Under the direction of Sheena Wagstaff, named the Met’s chair of modern and contemporary art, a new department, in 2012, the show’s curators selected nearly 200 works — by contemporary artists and by big names from Rembrandt to Rauschenberg — that were never completed or “partake of a non finito … aesthetic that embraces the unresolved and open-ended.”

About eight blocks away, at what is now identified as the Met Fifth Avenue, the top-billed special exhibition is “Vigée Le Brun: Woman Artist in Revolutionary France.” Closing May 15, the display of 80 paintings and pastels is said to be the painter’s first retrospective “in modern times.”

Finally, across Fifth Avenue from the “Big Met,” the exquisite Neue Galerie on the corner of 86th Street is the sole U.S. venue for “Munch and Expressionism,” through June 13. Organized with the Munch Museum in Oslo, the exhibition will explore the mutual influences among Edvard Munch and his German and Austrian contemporaries, including Max Beckmann, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Oskar Kokoschka and Egon Schiele.
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Richard Selden • March 30, 2016

Several great Americans were born into slavery. One way the nation pays tribute to such personages is on our currency. We are likely to see Harriet Tubman on the $10 or $20 bill in a few years. And in 2017, the former home in Anacostia of Tubman’s fellow abolitionist, Frederick Douglass, will appear on quarters.

Douglass, who lived in the hilltop house he named Cedar Hill from 1877 until his death in 1895, was known as the “Sage of Anacostia” and — both for his oratory and for his white mane — “the Lion of Cedar Hill.” Preserved by Douglass’s second wife, the property became Frederick Douglass National Historic Site in 1988.

Whether during Black History Month or when the nine-acre site is in bloom, a visit to Cedar Hill is one of D.C.’s most rewarding heritage experiences. The National Park Service offers ranger-guided tours of the restored house, furnished largely with original pieces, five times daily (reservations, made for a $1.50 fee at recreation.gov, are recommended).

The huge trees, terraced front lawn and woodsy backyard — where Douglass’s rustic stone hideaway, the “Growlery,” has been reconstructed — make it easy to imagine the rural Anacostia of the mid-1800s. The house’s builder and original owner was John Van Hook, one of the developers of an early, semi-successful suburb called Uniontown, aimed at Navy Yard workers (and from which Irish and African Americans were excluded).

Douglass purchased the house in 1877 upon his appointment by Rutherford B. Hayes as U.S. Marshall for the District of Columbia. He served until 1881 and later became Minister to Haiti, appointed by Benjamin Harrison.

Speaking at the dedication of the Haitian Pavilion at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, Douglas said of the Haitian people: “It will ever be a matter of wonder and astonishment to thoughtful men, that a people in abject slavery, subject to the lash, and kept in ignorance of letters, as these slaves were, should have known enough, or had left in them enough manhood, to combine, to organize, and to select for themselves trusted leaders and with loyal hearts follow them into the jaws of death to obtain liberty.”

Writing and speaking about human rights — of blacks and, during the latter part of his life, of women — was Douglass’s calling. Born in 1818 on a plantation in Talbot County, on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, he taught himself to read and write as an enslaved boy, a household servant in Baltimore.

At 20, while working as a ship caulker on the Baltimore docks, he escaped to New York City, married a free black woman, Anna Murray, and began to raise a family in New Bedford, Massachusetts. He soon became an agent of William Lloyd Garrison’s American Anti-Slavery Society and wrote the first of three autobiographies.

Still a fugitive from slavery, Douglass went on a speaking tour in Europe, returning to the U.S. after English friends purchased his freedom. In 1847, he launched an abolitionist newspaper, the North Star, in Rochester, New York. Twenty-five years later, at 54, a prominent public figure who had advised Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War, he and his family relocated to Washington, living at 316 A St. NE prior to buying the Anacostia estate.

A short film shown in the visitor center movingly tells his life-story, with graphic scenes of his treatment by a slave-breaker and winning cameos by actors playing Garrison, Tubman, Lincoln and John Brown. Several scenes were filmed in the house, including a confrontation between Douglass and his daughter over his decision to marry Helen Pitts, white and 20 years his junior.

There is an extensive selection of books by and about Douglass for all ages in the shop, notably the dual biography “Giants: The Parallel Lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln” by Harvard professor John Stauffer.

After a climb of 85 outdoor steps from the visitor center (there is also a ramp), the tour enters the house from the front porch. Visitors get to look in on rooms downstairs and up, including the kitchen wing that Douglass added, converting the former kitchen into a large dining room in which to host his many visitors. Before or after the tour, the hilly grounds are open to explore.

When in Anacostia, another black history stop is the Anacostia Community Museum, founded by the Smithsonian in 1967 as a storefront museum in the Carver Theater, a 1940s movie house. Twenty years later, it moved to a new building near Fort Stanton Park. On Saturday, Feb. 27, at 2 p.m., the museum will host Aaron Reeder’s show, “Rhythm Café: The Life & Times of Sammy Davis Jr.”

For more information on the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site, 1411 W St. SE, visit nps.gov/frdo or call 202-426-5961.

For more information on the Anacostia Community Museum, 1901 Fort Place SE, visit anacostia.si.edu or call 202-633-4820.
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Percy Metcalfe • March 24, 2016

As tourists descend on D.C. for the National Cherry Blossom Festival, and the weather (seemingly reluctantly) warms up, we’ve been on the lookout for places to escape the city for a relaxing weekend break.

The Castle Hill Inn in Newport, Rhode Island, part of the Relais & Châteaux network, could be the perfect stop on the way to Boston, should you find yourselves headed north to visit colleges, for example.

Built in 1875 as a summer retreat for a Harvard marine biologist, the stunning clapboard manse now serves as a quaint inn among the huge summer homes — known as “cottages” — of affluent Newport. If you choose to stay at the Castle Hill Inn, your weekend getaway will be replete with panoramic Atlantic views.

Rooms and beach cottages at the inn start at $370 a night. Check out the rocky enclave beneath the Harbor Houses, where Grace Kelly was known to scramble down to the water’s edge.

A break at the Castle Hill Inn will let you explore the shops of downtown Newport, as well as adventure along the coast in the hotel’s Hinckley Yacht. Alternatively, you can relax on the inn’s private beach.

Remember to book soon — beds are bound to fill up as summer approaches.
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Richard Selden • March 16, 2016

It happened in Philadelphia: 56 men in breeches created a nation.

Then, 51 years later, it happened again. This time, it was 53 men in trousers. And what they created was … a flower show.
Actually, what they created in 1827 was the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society. The first public show, featuring the poinsettia’s American debut, came two years later. (In 1835, the society admitted women as voting members — long before the nation did.)

The descendant of that historic event, the Philadelphia Flower Show, the largest and longest-running indoor show in the world, now attracts more than 200,000 visitors over nine days. The 2016 show, at the Pennsylvania Convention Center, ends this Sunday.

A Garden of Eden for plant-lovers — with award-winning specimens, lectures and vendors from around the world — the show is also a floral theme park that seems to grow Disney-er every year. Since this year’s theme is “Explore America: 100 Years of the National Park Service,” expect recreations of Yosemite, simulated Old Faithful eruptions and a Denali sled dog team. You can even “create your own Mount Rushmore floral headpiece.”

For details, and to reserve a garden tea or an early-morning private tour (weekdays only), visit theflowershow.com. Families with children should note that on closing day, Sunday, March 13, there will be a Flower Show Jamboree and a Teddy Bear Tea.

Prior to launching their kisses-and-hugs “With Love, Philadelphia” campaign, Visit Philadelphia’s slogan was “Philly’s More Fun When You Sleep Over.” With the Flower Show meriting a full day and three new museum exhibitions, it makes sense to get a room.

After a controversial legal and financial intervention, the Barnes Foundation galleries relocated from the suburban residence of Albert C. Barnes (1872–1951) to a new museum on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway in 2012. The move’s approval hinged in part on the exact reproduction of the unchanging salon-style display found in leafy Merion by the relatively few visitors who made it out there.

Architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien created a large and spacious modern building for the Barnes in which the tiny recreated rooms are encased. In accordance with Barnes’s eccentric theories of art appreciation, African, Native American, Pennsylvania German and other sculpture and artifacts, including miscellaneous wrought-iron objects, share the walls with frame-to-frame masterpieces by Renoir, Cezanne, Matisse and Modigliani (to name a few of Dr. Barnes’s favorites).

It is one of the most astounding museums in the world, now with the additional reason to visit of special exhibitions. Through May 9, the Barnes (which has 22 paintings by Pablo Picasso in its permanent collection) is hosting “Picasso: The Great War, Experimentation and Change.” The show’s focus is the period surrounding and including World War I, during which Picasso — the “High Priest of Cubism” in the words of curator Simonetta Fraquelli — abruptly returned to a naturalistic style, continuing to alternate between Cubism and Neoclassicism.

A video illustrates how during the war Cubism was portrayed as anti-French (though the style’s co-creator, Georges Braque, was as French as could be and served at the front) and associated with the despised Germans.

Several blocks up the parkway from the Barnes, “International Pop” is on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art through May 15. All the American stars are represented, of course: Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg, Tom Wesselman, Ed Ruscha. But what makes the show an eye-opener are the works by what the text calls the “British forbears of Pop,” notably Edinburgh-born Eduardo Paolozzi and London-born Richard Hamilton, whose collages date to the 1950s (earlier, in Paolozzi’s case), and by artists from throughout Europe and from Argentina, Brazil and Japan.

Finally, across the Schuylkill River, the University of Pennsylvania’s Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology is the exclusive U.S. venue for “The Golden Age of King Midas,” on view through Nov. 27. Of the 100-plus objects on loan from Turkish museums, many were excavated by Penn archaeologists from an eighth-century B.C. royal tomb, believed to be the resting place of Midas’s father Gordios.

Whether you hear the clatter of gold or of your muffler when you think of Midas, this exhibition is another example of the remarkable things to be seen this spring in the City of Brotherly Love.