Historic Home Tours: One Size Does Not Fit All

As an aspiring preservationist and historic home curator, one of the highlights of my trip to Virginia this summer was going on tours of three historic homes. When I lived in the DC area in the late 80s and early 90s, I made it to many of the essential tourist sites - the Jefferson and Lincoln Memorials, the Capitol, the Library of Congress, and almost all of the Smithsonian museums. I also spent many weekends at the National Gallery of Art. Sometimes, on these outings, I would have a companion, but just as often, I would go it alone. While in Virginia this summer, I had the pleasure of my Aunt Maggie's company on a couple of house tours. She was definitely one of the best "tourist buddies" I've had. We toured two homes together - Mount Vernon and Woodlawn Plantation. Then, I toured one other home - Frank Lloyd Wright's Pope-Leighey House - alone (Maggie had to take my cousin to a doctor's appointment). After our tours, what struck me most was not the architecture, furnishings or the stories the various docents told us, but how different the nature of three different tours were.

We started with Mount Vernon. Because of the numbers of people who tour the grounds and home, the tour of Mount Vernon was very well-organized, but somewhat regimented and impersonal. The posts and chains seen bordering the lawns in the picture above, in some sense, extend into the home itself. Visitors enter through a side door that leads into a beautiful dining room. The docent delivers her speech and one joins a line that snakes through the house giving you glimpses of porch, receiving hall, bedrooms and Washington's office. And I do mean "glimpses." Being a part of this circuitous line, one feels obliged to keep moving so as not to slow things up. (Although we did encounter one little princess of a girl whose mother had no qualms about letting her hold up the line with her toddler-sized histrionics.) Once you exit the house, there is freedom to walk the grounds, take pictures and tour the museum and education center. Now, don't get me wrong, the tour of Mount Vernon is nice. The docents know their scripts well and do their best to engage visitors with simple questions. And, of course, the house is amazing.

A few days later Maggie and I went to Woodlawn Plantation, the home of Martha Washington's daughter and George Washington, step-daughter. This tour was completely different to the one at Mount Vernon. First of all, Maggie and I were the only people on the tour. It reminded me of other historic homes where docents wait patiently - and, sometimes, desperately - for the odd visitor to arrive. After paying the admission fee and me making a quick trip outside, around the corner of the house, and down a set of stairs to the restrooms, we entered Woodlawn through the front door, which, once inside, the docent locked and barred with one of those beams you see doors locked with in the movies. For a minute, I thought we were trapped! The tour of Woodlawn was, in a word, leisurely. Because we had the docent to ourselves, we were able to ask questions and get more information than what one gets from a "canned" interpretive script. For me, one of the more interesting points the docent made was how the curators of the home had decided to reset how the rooms were cordoned off. Before, as is typical in many homes, including Mount Vernon, visitors were allowed to enter into rooms within about a three-feet by three-feet area just inside the door. Recently, the ropes had been moved to allow visitors to entire the room entirely while maintaining a proper distance from the furniture, especially the beds and chairs. (In one room, I nearly made a new exit through one of the walls, when a closet door began to open on its own. I was sure we were being visited by a ghost. The docent pointed out that the door led to offices for the staff. Whew!) In the end, the tour of Woodlawn was, as I said, leisurely and very well done.

On the same property as Woodlawn, but well enough removed so as not to compete with it, is the Pope-Leighey house, an example of Frank Lloyd Wright's "Usonian" house design. As I said, I toured this one alone, since my Maggie had to take my cousin to a doctor's appointment. (I say "alone." There were 6 or 7 in our particular group.) Again, this tour was unlike either Mount Vernon or Woodlawn. First, and most noticeably, we were allowed - or maybe, made - to sit down on chairs in the living area. To be honest, the chairs are reproductions from Wright's designs. Also, nothing was cordoned off as in the other homes. While we stayed with our tour group, the docent showed us through the house - which is much smaller than either of the previous homes - as if we were guests visiting for the first time. At each stop - bedrooms, bathroom, kitchen, dining area - she encouraged us enter completely and look around. Our docent was also the kind that, while she had a script and key points memorized, also gave us "behind-the-scenes" anecdotes about the "Usonian" houses, the previous owner and the preservation process. She also sprinkled her talk with some personal opinions. Some might find such personal interjections improper or off-putting, but I felt it spoke of a genuine and personal connection to the home, as if, in a way, it was hers.

So, three very different tours of three very different homes. What historic homes have you visited where the style of tour made an impression on you? Was the impression favorable? Or not?