Mansion tours add Women’s History Month theme

Visitors who tour the Executive Mansion during Women’s History Month in March will have the option of choosing a “Women in the Mansion” tour.

The public tours will be offered at 1 p.m. March 2 and March 9. The tours are free, but space is limited and advance reservations are required.

Historian Shanna Stevenson, former coordinator of the Washington Women’s History Consortium, will present stories of Washington women who have influenced the history of the state from inside the governor’s Executive Mansion.

Stevenson, who is a regular volunteer guide at the mansion, said, “It covers both Washington’s first ladies and the women who have served as governor. We’ll also be telling how suffragists lobbied for women’s voting rights during the official mansion ‘housewarming’ in 1909.”

Standard tours of the mansion, with an emphasis on its general history and furnishings, are available on those dates and on most Wednesdays.

For reservations for tours of the governor’s mansion through Department of Enterprise Services’ Visitor Services program, call 360-902-8880 or email tours@des.wa.gov.

This story was originally published February 8, 2016 at 12:44 PM with the headline "Mansion tours add Women’s History Month theme."