Two Houses

Last week we saw our second candidate site, Hendry House, in Arlington, VA, where we live. This is a historic mansion in a city park. The house's main level has three cozy rooms with sparking wood floors, flowing neatly into another. Numerous large windows open to covered patios on three sides. We visited on a gray winter day, but could easily imagine the wooded grounds in fall colors for our planned October date.

Wedding site and cozy home are crossed purposes. But this house's close quarters generate a certain understated elegance and bit of spacial intrigue that make a virtue of its limitations. Nonetheless, its a small site. The house only holds 65 people inside seated at tables. A couple dozen more could be put out on the patios. Although we were told this is typical, it would be less than ideal. Squeezing people in and managing traffic could prove a challenge.

Hendry House is set in Fort C.F. Smith Park, historical park preserving a civil war Union army fortification, marking a crucial line of defense against the Confederacy. The house was built in the early 20th century. A restored Union fort in Virginia, where seemingly every other road and Junior High is named for Robert E. Lee and where the stars and bars fly from the strangest places, is an an odd and refreshing phenomenon. Arlington, in modern terms, still marks the the farthest reach of the U.S. counterrevolution.

The first site we visited, Decatur House, had the bones of a proper wedding site. It has a large rectangular room with an entry atrium side by side with a large stone courtyard. Sitting on the verge of Lafayette park, bookend to a row of elegant Federal row houses and a shout from the White House, it has a diffuse air of power and history. As is clear from its second billing in this report, it nonetheless failed to make the necessary impression. The mealy carpet and tourist trampled fittings reduce its air to airs. The courtyard is at the bottom of a canyon of buildings whose grim backsides are not what they might seem from their facades on Lafayette park. The price added a bad aftertaste. This has become a recurring theme with our other site visits, and a note Hendry House continually strikes in dominant contrast.