Langhorne House - Danville, Virginia
N 36° 34.805 W 079° 24.187
17S E 642867 N 4049477
The Langhorne House is the birth Place of Nancy Langhorne Astor(Lady Astor)who was the first female to sit in the British House of Commons.
Waymark Code: WMB2K7
Location: Virginia, United States
Date Posted: 03/27/2011
Views: 3
The Langhorne House is the birthplace of Lady Nancy Langhorne Astor, the first woman to sit in
the British Parliament. The National Register significance of the property, however, stems from its association with Lady Astor’s homecoming visit to Danville in 1922, a celebrated event in the city’s history. The original section of the two-story Italianate house was built in the 1870s for Lady Astor’s parents, Nancy and C. D. Langhorne, and it was here that Nancy Langhorne was born in 1879. Nancy Langhorne married Waldorf Astor, heir to one of the world's largest fortunes, and was elected to the House of Commons in 1919 to fill a seat vacated when her husband moved to the House of Lords. Meanwhile in Danville, Lady Astor’s birthplace was converted to apartments and given a Classical Revival front porch in 1921. It was from the new porch that Astor addressed a crowd of 5,000 people on May 5, 1922, during an American tour to promote women’s causes and the Anglo-American relationship. Astor’s emotionally charged visit was reported in newspapers nationwide, and then as now Danville took great pride in its famous daughter. The association of the house with the early lives of Astor and with her sister Irene Langhorne Gibson, a celebrated beauty and model for her husband Charles Dana Gibson’s artistic creation “The Gibson Girl,” led to the purchase of the property by the Lady Astor Preservation Trust in 1988 and its subsequent rehabilitation. The first floor of the Langhorne House is now dedicated to interpreting the lives of Astor and Gibson.
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