Special 2025 programs mark the bicentennial of this historic gathering place for discussions of international affairs.

BY J. THOMAS BRANNAN

Courtesy of DACOR

In 1861, the DACOR Bacon House, the redbrick mansion perched at the corner of 18th and F Street, NW, in Washington, D.C., played host to a wedding attended by President Abraham Lincoln. In 2025, as the foreign affairs organization DACOR and its sister nonprofit, the DACOR Bacon House Foundation, commemorate the 200th anniversary of the historic DACOR Bacon House, this is just one of the moments they will explore in a series of events, open to the public, showcasing the Federal mansion’s place in U.S. history, including American diplomatic history.

Standing just blocks from the State Department, the house represents an ongoing commitment to advancing public understanding of diplomacy and support for current and future generations of the U.S. Foreign Service. It is known for the international scope of its programs and the hospitality it offers to members and guests. Indeed, the mandate of the DACOR Bacon House is to serve as an intellectual gathering place for the discussion of international affairs among DACOR’s 1,700 members and by the many organizations that support and use the house.

“We are proud to share the DACOR Bacon House with the larger foreign affairs community,” says Angela Dickey, president of DACOR and the DACOR Bacon House Foundation, and a retired State Department Foreign Service officer. “Many of us in the Foreign Service received our first exposure to diplomatic courtesies and hospitality in this house. We are extremely fortunate to have inherited this incomparable setting, where we can bring together in community individuals who are devoting their lives and careers to international understanding and impact.”

Who Was Virginia Murray Bacon?

Virginia Bacon at her home with Claude Lebel, of the French embassy in Washington, D.C., in March 1962. Mrs. Bacon used her social graces to foster the international understanding to which she was so committed.
Courtesy of DACOR

The redbrick mansion takes its present name from the last private owner of the house, Virginia Murray Bacon, one of the few female members of DACOR in its early days, who upon her death in 1980 donated the property to a foundation honoring the memory of her late husband, Congressman Robert Low Bacon. In 1985 the Bacon and DACOR foundations merged to create the DACOR Bacon House Foundation, bringing to fruition Mrs. Bacon’s dream of creating a venue for promoting diplomacy and international understanding. In the 40 years since the house was acquired by the foundation, DACOR members have underwritten the cost of its preservation, made it accessible to mobility impaired members and guests, and invited other diplomacy-focused organizations to make use of it in accord with Mrs. Bacon’s wishes.

“Mrs. Bacon came from a long line of socially and politically powerful women who owned DACOR Bacon House from its earliest days,” says DACOR historian Dr. Terry Walz. “Her predecessors were the wives of the U.S. marshal for the District of Columbia, the clerk of the Supreme Court, and the chief justice of the United States. What makes Virginia unusual among them was her interest in the wider world and her unstinting support for the arts.”

She arrived in Washington after her husband, Robert Low Bacon, was elected to Congress in 1922, representing New York’s solidly Republican 1st District. They easily fit into the Washington political scene. “She was also a political activist, world traveler, power hostess, and policy whisperer,” says DACOR archivist Elizabeth Warner. “And she was renowned for her ability to bring together the most interesting people in the world to the many salons, dinners, and other events she held for nearly 60 years at 1801 F Street. She treasured the storied history of the house and was adamant that it continue to be a place where people could come together to discuss important issues of the day.”

Richard Osborn, a noted cartoonist who was published in Harper’s, Fortune, Life, and The New Republic, was a good friend of Mrs. Bacon. He frequented many events at her home and often gave her drawings depicting her social life and friendships.
Courtesy of DACOR

The Original Owners

The original owner of the four-story house, garden, and outer buildings, U.S. Marshal Tench Ringgold, bought the site and used slave labor to build the original house in 1824-1825. Ringgold hosted Supreme Court members during two of the court’s terms, in the winters of 1832 and 1833. Among the justices residing at the house was Chief Justice of the United States John Marshall, who had earlier (1800-1801) served as Secretary of State under President John Adams. Ringgold was appointed the U.S. Marshal for the District of Columbia by President James Monroe and reappointed by President John Quincy Adams.

The house was purchased in 1835 by Governor Samuel Sprigg of Maryland for his daughter Sally Sprigg, who married William Thomas Carroll, then the Clerk of the Supreme Court. During her stewardship, Mrs. Carroll rented her home to the Russian Imperial Minister to Washington Nikolai Shishkin (1875-1878); it served as a background for glittering social and diplomatic receptions. Following Mrs. Carroll’s death, the house was purchased in 1896 by Mary Ellen Fuller, wife of Chief Justice Melville Fuller, who resided in the house for 14 years, entertaining the justices on Saturdays as they discussed future cases.

After Justice Fuller’s death in 1910, the house was sold to Alice Copley Thaw, the divorced Countess of Yarmouth, who rented the house to Illinois Senator Medill McCormick and his wife, Ruth Hanna McCormick. This was the period when Republican Senator McCormick fought against the acceptance of the Treaty of Paris and U.S. participation in the League of Nations. After the death of Sen. McCormick in 1925, the house was sold again, this time to Congressman Bacon and his wife, Virginia. In contrast with the isolationist McCormick, Virginia Bacon was a fierce advocate for U.S. leadership and official acceptance of the principle of multilateralism as embodied in the United Nations.

Today, the exterior of the home is protected by an easement from the National Trust for Historic Preservation, ensuring its architectural integrity. As DACOR is a historic site and museum, its operation is supported by committed DACOR volunteers, docents, donors to the foundation, and the many foreign affairs groups who meet at the house, including the American Foreign Service Association, the American Academy of Diplomacy, the Women’s Foreign Policy Group, the USAID Alumni Association, the Association of Black American Ambassadors, the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, and others.

Over the years, the house has regularly hosted foreign affairs luminaries. Secretary of State George Shultz, a DACOR member, was the principal speaker at the dedication ceremony for the organization’s move to the DACOR Bacon House on May 23, 1986.
Courtesy of DACOR

2025 Bicentennial Program of Events at the House

His Excellency Laurent Bili, French ambassador to the U.S., keynoted an August 2024 celebration marking the anniversary of the Marquis de Lafayette’s 1824-1825 return visit to America. Bili recounted the history of U.S.-French relations since the two nations’ alliance during the American Revolution.
Courtesy of DACOR

The theme of the 2025 bicentennial programs at DACOR Bacon House is the formative role that its residents played in promoting public understanding of the importance of diplomacy and development to the nation’s security and prosperity, the advancement of U.S. foreign policy goals, and the spread of democratic values. During its 200 years, the mansion has served as a meeting place for government officials, politicians, legislators, judges, and leading cultural and society elites. It has been a setting for discussions and policymaking on the country’s legal system, U.S. foreign policy, and, since the Rogers Act of 1924, the modernization of America’s diplomatic corps.

The bicentennial series was preceded by a public forum in June 2024, which celebrated the anniversary of the Rogers Act and the creation of the modern U.S. Foreign Service. In August, the house hosted the French ambassador at a gala celebrating the 200th anniversary of the 1824-1825 return visit of the Marquis de Lafayette to the United States and the important role played in that visit by U.S. Marshal Ringgold. The series continued during the fall with a November dinner charting two centuries of change in the “President’s Neighborhood,” including a discussion of how private residences were replaced by hotels and government office buildings.

The series will continue with a luncheon program on March 19 devoted to the social history of other historic Washington houses, including the Ringgold residence.

An April 10 dinner program will focus on the house as the Carroll family experienced it during the Civil War. President Abraham Lincoln and Mrs. Lincoln came to the house for the 1861 wedding of a Carroll daughter, Sally. Two Carroll sons served in the Federal Army during the war. The family’s oldest son, Samuel Sprigg Carroll, rose to the rank of brigadier general.

A luncheon program on May 14 will explore the role of Mrs. Bacon as a hostess at gatherings of the city’s power brokers. Even after her husband’s death in 1938, Mrs. Bacon was renowned as one of the “Three B’s”—a trio of Washington salonnieres, including hostesses Marie Beale of Decatur House and Mildred Barnes Bliss of Dumbarton Oaks. During the mid-20th century, the three women presided over the city’s social scene, hosting events that brought together political and cultural leaders.

On June 10, DACOR will host an evening event, a 200th birthday party in the house’s half-acre garden. And in December, the yearlong celebration of the house will conclude with a Christmas musicale embracing the Victorian and modern music-making eras at the house. Virginia Bacon was an important patron of the arts in Washington, D.C., and played a prominent role in enlisting government support for the creation of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

Information about the 2025 DACOR Bacon House bicentennial programs can be found on the DACOR calendar of events.

J. Thomas Brannan serves on the Board of Governors at DACOR and is a member and former chair of DACOR’s Public Outreach Committee, which oversees undergraduate and graduate mentoring programs at the University of the District of Columbia and the George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs. Prior to his teaching career, he worked in city management, regional planning, and journalism.

Read More...

• “Telling Our Stories: The Foreign Affairs Oral History Collection” compiled by Susan B. Maitra, The Foreign Service Journal, March 2014
• “DACOR and University of the District of Columbia sign mentoring agreement” by Tom Brannan, State Magazine, December 2021
• “History of the House and Famous Residents,” The DACOR Foundation, 2024