7__ Anderson House
Isabel Weld Perkins, a jet-setting art patron
Completed in 1905, Anderson House was once heralded as “a Florentine villa in the midst of American independence.” The mansion was a winter residence for diplomat Larz Anderson and his wife, Isabel Weld Perkins. For more than 30 years, it served as the backdrop for their society galas and massive collection of arts and antiques. Larz Anderson married up when he joined lives with Isabel Weld Perkins. A Boston heiress, Perkins had ancestral ties all the way back to the Massachusetts Bay Colony and an inheritance rumored to be worth at least $5 million. At the age of 19, Perkins met Anderson in Rome, where he was posted as secretary of the US Embassy. They married two years later. Isabel took advantage of her husband’s diplomatic career to travel extensively and build a stunning collection of art and furniture. Not content to simply luxuriate in a life of leisure, Isabel turned her attention to writing. She wrote about American history and her family’s role in it, travelogues about the countries and cultures she discovered as an ambassador’s wife, poetry, children’s stories, and plays. During World War I, Perkins volunteered with the Red Cross in DC before heading to France and Belgium to care for the sick and wounded. When she returned to DC in 1918, she cared for those impacted by Spanish flu. She was ultimately awarded the Red Cross Service Medal, the French Croix de Guerre, and the Medal of Elisabeth of Belgium for her nursing contributions. The Andersons had no children, so when Larz passed away in 1937, Isabel was responsible for preserving their legacy. She personally oversaw the donation of the Anderson House mansion to the Society of the Cincinnati, of which Larz was a member. It now serves as the society’s national headquarters, and it hosts a public museum that documents the American Revolution and showcases the Andersons’ extensive collections. 22
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