This photograph, taken at the 1903 Bal Poudré at Whitehall, shows partygoers dressed in the style of the eighteenth century and wearing powdered wigs.
George Washington and the Bals Poudré George Washington’s birthday was one of a few holidays celebrated during the Gilded Age. Washington, a beloved hero of the American Revolution, symbolized honor and virtue, and as such paintings and sculptures of our first President were found in living rooms and civic halls across the country. Declared a federal holiday by Congress in 1879, Washington’s Birthday was often occasion for grand parties in his honor. By the early twentieth century, hosting a George Washington’s Birthday ball became a popular tradition, and in Palm Beach the ball was considered the highlight of the social “Season.” One style of ball held in honor of Washington was the Bal Poudré, or “powdered wig ball.” Powdered Wig Balls were popular in America and England during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
In England, for example, the Countess of Warwick loved to host Bals Poudré (Whitehall’s Breakfast Room ceiling is a copy of the State Dining Room at Warwick Castle). In America, Bals Poudré became an interesting fusion of America’s fascination with Marie Antoinette (Whitehall’s Drawing Room is an homage to Marie Antoinette) and its hero-worship of George and Martha Washington. While some guests wore costumes, they were free to appear in ordinary evening dress, but with powdered wigs, after eighteenth-century fashion. Ladies often wore their hair arranged on their heads in the style of Marie Antoinette, along with fake beauty marks on their faces. The first Bal Poudré in Palm Beach was hosted at Whitehall by Mary Lily and Henry Flagler on March 3, 1903. More than three hundred guests