"Walt Whitman in Washington" Walking Tour with Garrett Peck
Walt Whitman in Washington. The American poet laureate of the Civil War, Walt Whitman lived in Washington for ten years until a stroke prompted him to move to New Jersey in 1873. Whitman made an estimated 600 hospital visits during the war, supporting an estimated 80,000 - 100,000 sick and wounded soldiers, and later became a federal clerk. This walking tour of Civil War-era Washington looks at the many places Whitman worked: Clara Barton’s Missing Soldiers Office, Civil War graffiti in the Old Patent Office, Ford’s Theatre, and more. Learn more in Peck’s book Walt Whitman in Washington, D.C.: The Civil War and America's Great Poet.
The walking tour will start promptly at 4:30 p.m. on Saturday, August 17 at the Smithsonian American Art Museum on F Street at 8th NW, right under the Walt Whitman Way street sign. It is directly across the street from the Hotel Monaco and near the Gallery Place and Metro Center stations. It will end at 6:30 p.m. at the W Hotel on 15th Street. We will spend the first hour in the air-conditioned museum.
Date and Time: Saturday, August 17, 2019, 4:30 p.m. - 6:30 p.m.
Location: Walking tour starting at the Smithsomian American Art Museum, 8th and F St. NW, Washington DC 20004 right under the Walt Whitman Way street sign. It is directly across the street from the Hotel Monaco and near the Gallery Place and Metro Center stations.
Registration:
$25/person for Harvard Club members and their guests
$35/person for Non-members
Garrett Peck is an author, historian and tour guide in the nation's capital. He leads tours through the Smithsonian Associates, and his Temperance Tour of Prohibition-related sites has been featured on C-SPAN Book TV and the History Channel program "Ten Things You Didn't Know About" with punk rock legend Henry Rollins. He is featured in an upcoming two-hour documentary about prohibition by the Smithsonian Channel. His seventh book, “The Great War in America: World War I and Its Aftermath,” was published in 2018. Peck was involved with the DC Craft Bartenders Guild in lobbying the DC City Council to have the Rickey declared Washington's native cocktail in 2011. He researched and pinpointed the Washington Brewery site at Navy Yard, and is particularly proud that Green Hat Gin is named after a character Peck wrote about in “Prohibition in Washington, D.C.,” congressional bootlegger George Cassiday. He has lectured at the Library of Congress, the National Archives, and the Smithsonian Institution, and often speaks at historical societies, literary clubs and trade associations.Peck is on the board of the Woodrow Wilson House and is a member of the Association of the Oldest Inhabitants of D.C. A native Californian and graduate of the Virginia Military Institute and George Washington University, he lives in Arlington, Virginia.
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Where:
The Smithsonian American Art Museum (right under the Walt Whitman Way street sign)
8th St NW and F St NW
Washington, DC 20004 USA
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