I went to Daughters of the American Revolution (D.A.R.) museum over the weekend. It's one of the less visited museums. I know why. I was unimpressed and disappointed. It's right beside the White House on 17th Street and Connecticut Avenue. The building was built in 1911 and has had several additions added to it through the years.
In the D.A.R. museum, each state has a room depicting some decade of bygones past that they sponsor. The rooms are not representative of the state with the exception of three that I saw--Maryland, South Carolina, and Texas. Basically, when the D.A.R. museum has something go wrong with one of the rooms, they contact the D.A.R. branch in that state requesting them to raise funds or lobby their state for government funding for repairs or whatnots.
I have to say the link between the museum and the American Revolution was a stretch. There truly wasn't much in the way of women's role in the American Revolution or any object relative to the the American Revolution under the museum's roof with the exception of a chair that was a replica of one owned by George Washington. There were just a bunch of rooms with antiques in them.
I went on a docent led tour. It was just me and the docent giving the tour. Awkward!
Here are some pictures that are worth sharing for a couple of reasons.
This is a picture of the South Carolina room. The bed is a canopy, rice bed. So many southerners own rice beds. The paint is an ochre shade that was popular during the time. It was made to match the color of sand on the shores.
This room is from around the 1840s. It was a woman's parlor room. She would invite her close friends into this room to socialize. If you can make out the colors of the room, you'll see that they are green and red. The curtains, rugs, bed decorations are all red and green. I was told that red and green were the trendy colors around this time, and if you did not have red and green in your home, you were not fashionable.
This is the New Jersey room. The interesting detail about this room is that the wood paneling was saved from the wreckage of a British ship that was sunk by a bomb during the Revolutionary War. So, there you have a link to the war.
This room is sponsored by Maryland. The detail to notice is the wheeled furniture. There are wheels on everything in this room but the hutch in the far right corner. Since there was no electric light, furniture needed to be easy to push around to get into the light to sew, play cards, or read.
Fun fact: The phrase "straighten your room" came from wheely furniture during this time period. You would need to push all the furniture flush against the wall creating straight lines in order to tidy for company.
I wanted to juxtapose this picture against the one I just posted. Notice how in this picture the furniture is heavier and is not on wheels. This had everything to do with that lamp on the table. Pretend the chandelier isn't there, because it is not appropriate to the era. The docent said it was just put there for ornamental reasons. The lamp you see could cast light all over a room making wheels unnecessary. I think the lamp was an oil lamp.
Look at the wires hanging the painting. The molding was made to be able to hang pictures on wires and move them from place to place on the wall. This is circa 1830.
This is the Texas room depicting a bedroom in Texas around 1840. You'll notice red and green, again, like the other room. There was a influx of German immigrants who sailed from Germany to New Orleans, and then traveled to Texas. The bureau is representative of a piece of furniture with a Germanic influence.
I wouldn't recommend this museum to anyone visiting DC for only a short trip, but I'm glad I went just for the sake of going to one of the smaller museums.
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