St. Peter’s will be part of the Capitol Hill Restoration Society’s 65th Annual House and Garden Tour on Mother’s Day weekend, May 7-8. This popular spring event on Capitol Hill began in 1958. St. Peter’s has been on the tour before, and is appearing again because of its milestone Bicentennial.
In-person tours of both the church and the rectory will be offered on Sunday ONLY (May 8), from 1 to 4:15 p.m. in the church, and from 1 to 4:30 p.m. in the rectory. The church’s 5 p.m. Sunday Mass will occur as usual. Mary Lynn Stevens, Bicentennial events subcommittee co-chair, and Jerry Conlon, a member of the Bicentennial history subcommittee, are organizing the church and rectory tours for the parish.
This year’s CHRS tour is a hybrid event, combining virtual and in-person house tours and outdoor walking tours. Tickets are available through Eventbrite at: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/mothers-day-house-garden-tour-tickets-303010090337.
(photos courtesy of Capitol Hill Restoration Society)
Interestingly, the parish’s Sodality of Mary hosted a tour of historic Capitol Hill homes in the 1950s. A 1955 article about the tour in the Catholic Standard said that year’s event was the Sodality’s fifth annual tour and would include Friendship House, once the home of Francis Scott Key, who wrote the lyrics of our national anthem, “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Given the years of the Sodality tours, we might wonder if they were the inspiration for the annual CHRS tours.
(from the Catholic Standard archives; reprinted with permission)