Embassy Row is a place where the women ruled and champagne flowed like water. From around 1890 until the Great Depression, Massachusetts Avenue was the place for society, and while the men were politicking, the women ruled and competed for the honor of being the “hostess with the mostest.” Beneath the stately facades of Beaux Arts architecture was an exciting world of pleasure, leisure, scandal, gossip and above all, competition.

This walking tour will take you along the outside of the houses of the ladies of the old guard of Washington circa 1910. You'll hear stories of such ladies as Cissy Patterson, whose wealth and connections made her house on Dupont Circle a place even the President would envy; Evalyn Walsh McLean, the spendthrift, exuberant and happy-go-lucky owner of the Hope Diamond; and the incomparable Alice Roosevelt Longworth, eldest daughter of Theodore Roosevelt, often called “the other Washington Monument.”

At the end of the tour, you’ll get a special treat by going inside the Anderson House, whose formally restrained exterior masks an opulent interior.