Larz Anderson House

The Anderson House is a 1905 mansion in Dupont Circle once owned by Larz and Isabel Anderson. Larz married into Isabel's wealth and together they built this house as their D.C. home. When Larz left Isabel a widow in 1938, she gave the house (with everything inside) to the Society of the Cincinnati, the oldest patriotic society in the country. Today the society keeps the mansion open for free tours and houses the Revolutionary War Institute, a research center.

Tuesday-Saturday from 10am-4pm, free tours are offered by the docents. The tour lasts a little over an hour and you'll get to walk through most of the mansion (it's the only way to see the rooms). You'll hear about how the Society was started by soldiers of the Revolutionary War tasked with keeping freedom alive and taking care of the war's widows and orphans. You'll hear how current membership works, George Washington's involvement, and a lot about Larz Anderson, a Society member, and his wife.

The house itself is huge and was cutting edge for its day with electricity and modern heating. The bottom floor has a large hall for entertaining, the library, an outdoor courtyard, and several other rooms. Upstairs has the dining room, entertaining rooms, and a giant hallway. The third floor is not open for tours, but houses thirteen guest rooms for members of the Society.

The mansion is decorated with historic art and statues from the Anderson's extensive travels.

The Anderson House does have a small museum on the bottom floor and the space is used for events...

This was a beautiful historic home. The millennials (younger staff:1 guy and 2 girls) were amazing and need to take over the tour from Eddie B., the older white man. He is clearly delusional and was stating false history.

He prolonged the tour by continually interjecting throughout the tour useless opinions, his family's history, and incorrect historical facts. For example, he totally lied about the Republican party and it's inception. He said that slaves were indentured servants😧. African descendants were forcibly enslaved, treated less than animals and humans and considered property.

Indentured servitude is a form of labor in which a person is contracted to work without salary for a specific number of years. The contract, called an "indenture", may be entered voluntarily for purported eventual compensation or debt repayment, or imposed involuntarily as a judicial punishment.

Not only did he offend everyone on the tour but he was extremely rude to an elderly couple that were asking historical questions.

He also had the nerve to tell us to put our phones away no video or pictures in a museum. Of course no one stopped taking pictures.

I gave it 1star for the young staff. Eddie ruined the tour for everyone. A few of us stood outside the building after it was over to talk about how...

Admission is free, but the experience is worthless. This one-hour lecture summarizes everything I hated in my history classes in high school. A teacher is thinking that she keeps the audience engaged, she talks about her life, and various deviations from the main theme. She complains the group is too large (she prefers 6-8 people, we had 12), but the thing is she needs a small group only because in small group you cannot freely wander around taking photos, reading signs, and googling missing information. Because this class sucks, and you'd rather read a textbook in the evening.

In the end I'd prefer this tour to be paid for, and with professional guide.

The building is cool though. The all-male hereditary society sucks, but who am I to judge? (I'd prefer them not to have any tax benefits though)

And of course most of the reviews here are about using this as a venue for weddings. It must be better...