Take a step back in time on Oct. 4, as the Lee-Fendall House Museum and Garden (614 Oronoco Street) hosts a Roaring Twenties speakeasy night.
The annual event commemorating the centennial of state-level prohibition against alcohol will take place in the museum’s historic garden, with music from the Conservatory Classic Jazz Band. Since 2016, the fundraiser has raised over $50,000 to support the museum. Tickets for the event cost $97.88.
“Sips & Secrets honors Lee-Fendall House’s Prohibition-era history, when we were home to one of Alexandria’s liquor wholesalers (and suspected bootleggers!),” the museum said in the event listing. “It features lots of fun speakeasy surprises, including dancing to live jazz and ragtime, and a costume contest for the best flapper or mobster style, 1920s-style cocktails, and more.”
The evening will feature a Charleston lesson, dance contest, and silent auction. Attendees are asked to don their best 1920s outfits.
According to the Lee-Fendall House Museum and Garden:
Sips & Secrets pays homage to the Downham family, who owned Lee-Fendall House from 1903 to 1930. Their patriarch, E.E. Downham made his fortune during the Civil War selling alcohol to soldiers encamped in the city. His son and daughter-in-law Robert and Mai Downham made the Lee-Fendall house into a social center. Today, museum staff believe that when Virginia voted to ban the sale of alcohol in 1916, the Downhams turned to bootlegging to maintain their lifestyle – and so was born Sips & Secrets a century later.
