THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2025 47 standing 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? 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.” The DACOR Bacon House (page opposite), home of the foreign affairs organization DACOR, at 1801 F Street NW, Washington, D.C. 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. FRAME: ISTOCK.COM/VIKTAR KUZNIATSOU
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