Funkstown – Visit Foggy Bottom’s Grand DACOR Bacon House!

By Frank Leone

The DACOR Bacon House (1801 F St., two blocks from the White House) is one of Foggy Bottom’s oldest and most stately homes. The iconic Federal style four-story brick house was built in 1825 by Tench Ringgold, a prominent merchant and the United States Marshall for the District of Columbia from 1818 to 1831. The house was later inhabited by Supreme Court Chief Justices John Marshall and Melville Fuller, who held weekly conferences with fellow Supreme Court members there.

A Foundation affiliated with The Diplomats and Consular Officers, Retired, Inc. (DACOR) now owns and maintains the house. DACOR is an organization of foreign affairs professionals, which hosts programs to enhance awareness of and foster leadership in international affairs. (The acronym DACOR is similar to the French term, D’accord, used in French conversation to mean “agreed.”) The House is open to the public for docent tours on Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday from 2:30 to 4:30 pm.

On November 21, at 6 pm you can visit the house and enjoy a dinner and   presentation on The President’s Neighborhood: Two Dozen Blocks, Two Blockbuster Centuries of Change. Panelists include John DeFerrari, author of Sixteenth Street; Lina Mann, Historian, White House Historical Association; Katie Hummelt, Historian, Beyer Blinder Belle, contributor of the DACOR Bacon House Historic Structure Report; and me (Frank Leone, FBA History Project) who will discuss the changes in the neighborhood over 200 years. (DACOR members in-person $50; Non-members in-person $60; Virtual $10; in-person registration includes a 3-course dinner.)

DACOR Bacon House, 1801F Street (F. Leone, Oct. 2024). The house was originally two stories with two or three dependencies the but has been significantly enlarged and thoroughly renovated over time. The front and side walls and front steps were added when the street was lowered to facilitate improvements in the 1870s.

The property was sold by the estate of Tobias Lear (George Washington’s Secretary) to Ringgold, who owned the house from 1824 to 1835. Ringgold had been reported to have lived at a house a 25th and L Streets that evolved into the Columbia Hospital for Women, but recent research disputes this claim.  The architect of the DACOR house is unknown, although Ringgold worked with DC architects Benjamin Henry Latrobe and James Hoban in his capacity as one of three commissioners President James Madison selected to oversee the reconstruction of the city after the British burned Washington in 1814. 

Ringgold served as US Marshall under Presidents Monroe and J.Q. Adams, with the prime responsibility of maintaining order in the Capital. He was not reappointed by President Jackson, became indebted, and was forced to sell the house. During his residency and until emancipation in 1862 enslaved workers provided services for the house owners and many later servants were free African Americans and Irish immigrants.

The DACOR Bacon House has an expansive garden (F. Leone, Oct. 2024). The grounds also include a large brick carriage house.

The house was subsequently owned by a series of affluent couples whose wives acted as grande dames in the fashionable Washington social scene. As with the nearby F Street House, guests included Presidents of the United States and other dignitaries. The house owners were William T. Carroll, Chief Clerk of the Supreme Court for 30 years and his wife Sallie Sprigg Carroll (1835-1895); Chief Justice Melville & Mary Ellen Fuller (1895-1910); Alice Cornelia Copley Thaw, the former Countess of Yarmouth, who mostly rented it out (1911 – 1923); and Congressman and Robert Low  and Virginia Murray Bacon (1925-1980). Mrs. Bacon conveyed the house to DACOR.

The DACOR Bacon House Library, with the portrait of Chief Justice John Marshall (F. Leone, Oct. 2024)

Visitors walk through several of the mansion’s spacious ceremonial and entertainment rooms and view several remarkable fireplace treatments, 1840s candlelight chandeliers, and antique American, European and Asian furnishings and decorative arts. The House maintains collections including: the Virginia Murray Bacon Collection (ancestor portraits and European decorative arts); the Robert Low Bacon Collection (Americana); the Willard Straight Collection (Chinese art); the Kyoko Schmidt Collection (Japanese art), and the Members Collection (diplomatic memorabilia and cultural artifacts from the world over).

Sources:  Thanks to House historian Dr. Terence Walz for sharing the house and its history.  DACOR Bacon, History of the House and Famous Residents; Terence  Walz, The Enslaved Household of Tench Ringgold, White House History Assoc., May 2020; Terence Walz, “How John Marshall and the Other Justices Came to Board at DACOR Bacon House in 1832 and 1833,” Supreme Court Historical Society, Sept. 12, 2022; Beyer Blinder Bell, DACOR Bacon House Historic Structure Report Final Submission, Oct. 2021; William D. Calderhead, DACOR Bacon House, Archetype Press, 1999; FBA History Project.