Dumbarton House

Our final installment for National Preservation Month focuses on one of Dumbarton House’s most iconic elements: our wallpaper. Three out of our four period rooms are papered, as is the Central Passage—and while the paper isn’t original to the house, the patterns selected are copies of extant samples.

All our wallpaper comes from Adelphi Paper Hangings, and represents a variety of styles from across the Federal era. The Blue Bixby Pattern in the Best Chamber dates to 1811-1817, while our iconic Coffered Rosette pattern in the Central Passage is a French pattern from c. 1800 (although some visitors have asked whether it’s from the 70s!)

While the papers in the Dining Room and Parlor look more subdued, they were selected based on letters and purchase records from Joseph Nourse, who lived at Dumbarton House from 1804-1813. When the Nourses moved into the house, Joseph spent $52.12 at the Philadelphia paper merchant Joseph Hurley, on “light and light buff” wallpapers. The Parlor’s floral pin-spot pattern is a reproduction of a pattern known to have been sold at Hurley’s shop, and the hand-carved woodblock used in its printing is now in the Dumbarton House museum collection.

While the paper on our walls is not original, we are fortunate enough to have found a few pieces of old wallpaper over the years. During the same renovation that revealed the original plaster cornice mentioned in our last post, we found an untouched section of wallpaper. This pattern, while not definitively dated, was likely installed in the 1870s. While this wallpaper doesn’t tell us anything about the Federal history of the house, it helps us date the renovation that completely changed the layout of the first floor, turning the Best Chamber and Breakfast Room into one large parlor.

During the demolition phase of our current HVAC project, we were incredibly excited to find a new piece of wallpaper. Measuring only about 1.75” by 1”, its colors and pattern are consistent with mid- to late-Federal patterns. We’re so thrilled to have found a new piece of the house’s history, and can’t wait to learn more about it!

Hi neighbors! Did you notice anything exciting happening last week?

On Thursday, May 21 at 6 am, a large crane (weighing several tons!) carefully maneuvered into the Dumbarton House lower parking lot.

Through careful calculations and close supervision, the crane first lowered steel beams into the cooling tower yard to create a frame that will house the screens that will ultimately surround the yard. As the crane operator and welders put the frame in place, the other members of the crew took the pieces of the cooling tower from their pallets and assembled the tower on site. The cooling tower is the heart of the HVAC system, where the water-glycol solution will run through for filtering and climatizing that will provide cooled air to Dumbarton House.

Once the cooling tower was assembled, the crane operator lifted it from its assembly point in the parking lot, over the trees and set it into its prepared space in the cooling tower yard.

Since it was placed, the workmen have begun to connect the piping and wiring and are quickly moving toward the finish line of the HVAC project!

For our third National Preservation Month post, we’re looking up at an often-overlooked feature of our period rooms: our molding! When the NSCDA purchased Dumbarton House in 1928, it was thought that all molding in the house was original, despite the house already having gone through at least one major renovation.

The molding is one of the greater mysteries in our period rooms, as much of our previous research has resulted in conflicting reports. Some research points to the cornices and molding being original, others say that they are copies of the original plasterwork, and others still say that none of the moldings, friezes, and cornices are original to the house, and were installed during one of the renovations.

In an attempt to unravel a little bit of this mystery, our curator decided to play detective and look through some pre-renovation photos. Based on those, it appears that the molding in the Breakfast Room was replaced in the 1929 renovation, but the cornices and friezes in the public spaces—the Central Passage, Parlor, and Dining Room—appear to be original, or at least predate the NSCDA purchase of the house.

The Best Chamber molding was thought to be original until 2023, when a renovation revealed an original plaster cornice in a furred-out portion of the wall. Similar in style and material to the cornice in the Parlor and Central Passage, with its pattern of Grecian urns and floral relief, it helps confirm that the remaining molding is likely original to the house, or at least a good approximation of what was originally installed.

While we will likely never know what molding originally graced the Breakfast Room, it is possible that the molding seen in the pre-renovation photos is original to the house. The Breakfast Room was always intended as a simpler room, and its design would have reflected that.

We still don’t know everything about Dumbarton House, and that’s a good thing! Preservation doesn’t mean having all the answers—sometimes, it’s just doing the best we can with the information we have.

We’ll be back later this week for our final post in National Preservation Month, with one of Dumbarton House’s most recognizable features—any guesses?

It’s week two of National Preservation Month, we’re talking about the floors. Unlike the mantels, the floors are original to the house and are used to interpret three different styles from the Federal era.

Our most recently restored floors are in the Best Chamber and Breakfast Room, where layers of old varnish were scraped away during our most recent renovation to reveal the original wood. While some may consider this to be the least visually interesting flooring in the house, these bare planks can tell us a lot about what the house would have looked like in the past. Most notable are the parallel lines of holes left behind by carpet tacks, which tell us these rooms were once carpeted. As no records confirm carpeting in these rooms during the Nourse or Carroll years, however, we must assume that the carpets in these rooms were of a later installation.

On the other side of the front hall, the Parlor and Dining Room have some examples of carpets that would have been used during the early Federal era. The Parlor carpet is an original c.1800 pattern found in the archives of Woodward Grosvenor & Co., Ltd., who have been in existence since 1790 and specialize in bespoke Brussels and Wilton carpets. The Dining Room carpet is also a reproduction Brussels carpet from Grosvenor & Co., with a pattern dated to 1812. Both carpets were installed in a historically accurate manner, tacked down on to the floor in 27” wide strips—if you look very closely, you might be able to see them!

Finally, our floorcloth in the Central Passage completes our Federal era flooring options. Floorcloths were popular in early America, when cost-prohibitive taxes on imported marble caused homeowners to turn to other options. Cheaper, hard-wearing, and easily cleaned, floorcloths became a solid choice, especially in halls and entryways.

Our floorcloth is a reproduction, installed in 1998. Made from old sailcloth, it gives the illusion of a checkerboard marble floor in our hall, over what is just wooden planking, like in the rest of the house.

Which of these flooring options is your favorite? Let us know! And check back in next week when we look at some original (and not-so-original) molding.

May is National Preservation Month, and while we’re closed for our HVAC replacement, we’re taking the opportunity to look at our largest artifact of all: the house. Over the course of the month, we’ll be looking at an aspect of preservation every week, using a different part of the house as our guide.

This week, we’re looking at the mantels. Dumbarton House has seven—and none of them are original to the house! When the house was first restored by the NSCDA between 1929 and 1931, the mantels were replaced with extant examples from other historic houses. The four mantels in our period rooms date from between 1790 and 1820, offering a full spectrum of design choices from throughout the Federal era.

The oldest mantels in the house are in the Parlor and Best Chamber. Built from white pine and dating to1790, both originally came from Philadelphia—likely from the same house. The Breakfast room mantel, from 1820, is from a local house: its object file notes that it came from a house on 34th Street in Georgetown.

Likely the most impressive mantel in our collection (because technically, these mantels are collection items—they have official accession numbers!) is in the Dining Room. This mantel came from the home Chief Justice John Marshall occupied during his time on the Supreme Court—now known as DACOR Bacon House. The mantel features an intricately carved design of the U.S.S. Constitution (known as “Old Ironsides”), one of the most famous ships in American naval history.

While none of these mantels are original to the house, they display the character and design of the Federal Period, saved from different locations across the young nation.

Check back next week to learn about the floors in Dumbarton House!

For this month’s installment of Dumbarton House 250, we’re covering the years of 1790-1815: the early Federal era. We’ll explore how the capital’s move to the other side of Rock Creek in 1800 impacted Georgetown, the planning of Washington City as the new capital, and of course the building of Dumbarton House! Click this link (https://dumbartonhouse.org/georgetown-1790-1815/) to learn more about Federal-era Georgetown, Dumbarton house, and to meet some of our early residents.

In the second installment of Dumbarton House 250: A Georgetown Series, we explore Georgetown’s history from 1776 to 1789. Click the link (https://dumbartonhouse.org/1776-1789/) to learn about the growth of Georgetown, find out who was our first Postmaster General, and the canal along the Potomac built by a George Washington-led company!

April 1st is known as National One Cent Day, commemorating the circulation of American currency, which began in April 1787. On April 21, Congress authorized a design for a copper penny, thought to have been created by Benjamin Franklin. Known as the “Fugio” penny due to its inclusion of the Latin motto for “I flee,” it also featured the motto “Mind Your Business” on one side and “We Are One” on the reverse.

While we don’t have a Fugio penny in our collection, we have another early penny: the fourth iteration, known as the “Draped Bust.” Like all early pennies, it’s much larger than its modern counterpart—1.1 inches across, or about the size of a dollar coin. Its design includes a draped bust of Lady Liberty on the front, and a laurel wreath on the back. This design was used, with minimal changes, from 1796 to 1807.

Our penny is from 1800 and was critical in dating the construction of Dumbarton House. During the 1928-31 renovation, it was found in the wall of our front hall and is considered proof that the historic portion of the house dates to 1800. Embedding coins in construction projects is a practice dating back to the 15th century, and to this day, some masons still include a coin when constructing a building, partly due to tradition, and partly due to ease of future dating. We’re sure that the historians of the future will be grateful!

We hope you enjoyed learning about Women’s History in the Federal Period with our posts this month! To conclude our Women’s History Month series, we wanted to share some resources to continue learning about Women’s History.

To learn more about the specific topics of our posts this month - women’s education, women’s work, and gossip - check out "Learning to Stand and Speak: Women’s Education and Public Life in America’s Republic" by Mary Kelley, "Columbia’s Daughters: Girlhood Embroidery from the District" by Gloria Seaman Allen, and "The Age of Homespun: Objects and Stories in the Creation of an American Myth" by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich.

If you are interested in Women’s History as a whole in America, "America’s Women: Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates, and Heroines" by Gail Collins is a wonderful cultural history that tells the complete story of American women from the Pilgrims to the 21st century.

For popular history enthusiasts, "Wild Women of Washington DC: A History of Disorderly Conduct from the Ladies of the District" by Canden Schwantes and "Ladies of Liberty: The Women Who Shaped the Nation" by Cokie Roberts both provide profiles of women who pushed the bounds of their station to make history.

Finally, if you have a young one who wants to learn about women in history, "Within Our Power" by Sally Walker explores the Edenton Tea Party, which we discussed in our second Women’s History Month post. Cokie Roberts’ "Ladies of Liberty" also has a version for kids!

Opening up Dumbarton House’s collection database and typing “sewing” into the search bar returns a wealth of objects: sewing boxes and tables, pincushions, needle holders—which all speak to the ubiquity of handsewing in the preindustrial age.

Before the invention of the modern sewing machine, every single stitch in every item of clothing was made by hand. From the diary of Sarah Fouace Nourse, Joseph Nourse’s mother, we can see just how much of women’s lives was spent ensuring that their families and households remained clothed.

Feb. 2, 1781: “cuting out shirts for Mr N. & Jim.”

Feb. 3, 1781: “Finishd. cuting out shirts.”

Feb. 5, 1781: “made little Gown for Zelpha.”

Feb. 6, 1781: “winding silk to twist, to mend up black Gowns.”

Feb. 9, 1781: “mending up Crimson Satten Gown.”

Feb. 10, 1781: “Poorly, but finishd. Gown & Coverd. Buttons for Jack and Gabe’s cloths.”

From this week of entries, we can see how much of the burden of creating and maintaining clothing fell to the women of the household. Once clothing was made—which involved cutting, sewing, finishing, and often making buttons from scratch—it had to be mended to ensure its longevity. The sheer amount of work that went into clothing meant that it was a precious resource, but also a sign of wealth for those who could afford to have it made by others.

A portrait of Sarah and James Nourse, usually kept in the Breakfast Room (where we also have a sewing table on display) depicts clothing as both a marker of status—Sarah's silk dress with lace trim would have been considered quite the status symbol in 1754—but it also shows its subjects with the tools of their trade: paper and quill for James, and handwork for Sarah. And if you look closely, you’ll see that even in this most formal of portraits, Sarah’s sewing basket is within easy reach.

The history of dress has long been overlooked, seen as mere “women’s work” relegated to the background of history, rather than an integral part of it. By choosing to highlight clothing, as well as the tools that were used to make it, we also shed light on the hands that created those objects, and the women whose daily lives were filled with sewing.