Our second day in Georgetown started remarkably bright and early. John had made arrangement for us to have breakfast at the Tabard Inn, supposedly the most trendy spot in Dupont Circle for breakfast.
What this picture doesn’t show that well is just how cold it was! The temperature was hovering just about freezing, and there was a sharp wind that plunged the temperature significantly lower.
We drove over to breakfast. It was decent, but nothing particularly astonishing. After that John, had planned out a walking tour of Georgetown for us. We drove and parked on the waterfront there. But as the wind whipped particularly hard in our faces everybody agreed that is was far too cold for walking. We had to do something inside. Our first choice was the Renwick Gallery, the Smithsonian’s museum of furniture and decorative arts. Unfortunately, we figured out when we were looking up the address that it is currently closed for major renovations. So we decided that our second choice would be the National Building Museum.
Housed in the former Pension Building, the National Building Museum is not public or part of the Smithsonian Institution. When we entered the building, the docents told us that a free tour of the building was about to begin. We had an informative tour guide who explained all about the history of the the Pension Building. Designed by General Montgomery C. Meigs, it was designed to provide a central and accessible location for the government office that paid Civil War pensions to injured soldiers and their widows. As there were nearly a million of these after the war, a staggering percentage of the population of the country in those days, there needed to be a large structure for the records and the clerks. Meigs created not only one of the largest buildings in the world at that time, but also ingeniously designed cutting edge ventilation and cooling systems for it.
Entrance to this cavernous structure is free, but you have to buy a ticket to get into any of the many exhibits housed there. This was not particularly expensive, and many of the exhibits were really quite fascinating. There were exhibits on the different ways to build houses, on designing against natural disasters like hurricanes or earthquakes. There was another on historic preservation and it had pieces of now lost buildings like the one below.
Still, the building itself is sort of the most interesting thing there.
We had a bit of lunch for the people before we left. Our next stop was the Tudor Place mansion back in Georgetown. This is certainly a historic estate, though not that interesting otherwise. It was originally the home of Thomas Peter and his wife, Martha Parke Custis Peter, a granddaughter of Martha Washington. Because of this connection, there are a few pieces of furniture and china that were originally at Mount Vernon. But it was never more than a sort of squire’s residence.
Originally the estate sloped down to the Potomac where tobacco and other farm products were shipped down to other states and Europe.
The interior is just like it was when the last owner died in 1983. It’s a hodge-podge of furniture from various periods. Not much of it is particularly good although the guides pointed out how the different pieces illustrated the history of the country.
We walked home. It got even colder as the evening progressed!
In the evening went to 1789 restaurant. It was quite good but very expensive. We then went to jazz club to see Kevin Eubanks, the former music director for Jay Leno. It was that kind of jazz - I suppose it’s fusion - where there’s little evidence of any particular melody, just a great deal of sort of contrapuntal flow of notes. I did not dislike it, but I found it somewhat less than engaging.
