Beautiful weather and a map of sites in D.C. leads us once more to the various sights this city has to offer, okay so the first of our excursion was found in our front yard. The Sewall-Belmont House sits comfortably caddy-corner to our residence. Passing the arched stained glass doorway every day to and from the Hart Senate Office building, where I work, I have always wondered what laid behind the colored glass of this unique old house entrenched with ivy. Once a make shift bunker for soldiers to fire down upon the British, the house became one of the only private residences to survive the burning of the U.S. capitol. Most recently, the house is home to the National Women’s Party by whom it was purchased in 1929. It wasn’t until taking a tour of the house that I realized the gravity of the women’s suffrage movement. While imprisoned for simply standing with banners outside the White House (as seen above), they went on hunger strikes from the maggot-ridden food. The remedy for such militant behavior was to cram tubes down their throats, forcing them to consume a mixture of eggs and milk. This damaged many of the women’s teeth leaving them embarrassed to smile in many of the pictures throughout the house. With a glance at the map we were off to surf the metro. We (Davide Mike and I) landed at a stop that provided us with a 30-minute walk to the National Cathedral. After almost 80 years of construction it was finally completed in the early nineties. Surrounded by a campus town the ornate gothic architecture can be seen from blocks away. Inside the cathedral a full spectrum of color piercing through the stained glass, melts across the web of stone buttresses and granite floors. Both destinations shed new light in their own way on history. The Cathedral represents an almost hundred year project to realize a dream of one church for all to gather, the Sewall-Belmont house, with its wartime past and Woman’s Party present represents the dream of equal rights for all to enjoy.
~ Jared, Davide, Mike
For further knowledge on the trials and tribulations of the women's suffrage movement, I suggest the movie Iron Jawed Angels. There are scenes that depict the hunger strikes and the force-feeding. Yum.
ReplyDelete-EFG
After hearing Davide and Jared were going to the Sewall-Belmont house, I decided to go the following hour for a tour. I was the only one on the tour so I had the opportunity to ask my guide a lot of questions. With each question I asked, the guide gave an insightful and knowledgeable answer. I really enjoyed going here, especially because I have an interest in women's rights. However, it's also nice because the house isn't too big- I felt that after an hour I really had a feel for the history of the building and the movement for women's suffrage. I highly recommend going here- and Elise's suggestion of "Iron Jawed Angels" can be purchased in the house's gift shop :)
ReplyDelete-LJB