PBS Series 'Mercy Street' Inspires 25 New Tours, Events in Alexandria

ALEXANDRIA, VA -- Fans of PBS' "Mercy Street" will be excited to learn that Alexandria is launching 25 new exhibits, events and tours geared to the program, which begins its second season in January. PBS’ first original American drama in a decade is inspired by real events of Civil War Alexandria. Alexandria is celebrating the national spotlight on its history by presenting 35 visitor experiences for fans of the show in 2017, including 25 new offerings. The new exhibits and more will feature Civil War-era cultural customs including food, fashion and music. Visitors will get a chance to uncover the real people behind the characters on the show, the realities of Civil War medicine, the changing roles for women and the breakthrough experience of enslaved African-Americans claiming their freedom.

Here's are the highlights of the new 2017 events, announced Tuesday by Visit Alexandria:

• Carlyle House events including “Gala in the Garden” with "Mercy Street" producers (May 20), “Love and Romance Between the Lines” open house event (Feb. 11) with historic chocolate treats and reenactors playing real-life love birds Frank Stringfellow and Emma Green, and “Fashion Show and Tea on the Terrace” (June 4) featuring Civil War-era fashion.
• Stabler-Leadbeater Apothecary Museum’s “Apothecary of Mercy Specialty Tour” (starts Jan. 8) and“This Terrible Disease” exhibit (opens Jan. 13) featuring prescriptions and remedies sold to the Union Commissary Department and to the contraband population and civilian residents in Alexandria during the Civil War.
• Civil War-inspired food events including “Civil War Wine Dinner with Gray Ghost Winery” (Jan. 26) and“Heflebower’s Cobblers and Cocktails” (Feb. 3), both at Gadsby’s Tavern, and lectures at the Lyceum including programs with the authors of “Food in the Civil War Era” (Jan. 12) and “Starving the South” (Feb. 23).
• “Before the Spirits are Swept Away: African American Historic Site Paintings by Sherry Z. Sanabria” (continues through May 2017) at the Alexandria Black History Museum featuring over 20 paintings honoring the lives of African-Americans who survived slavery, and years of racial injustice, but whose presence defined the American landscape
• Fort Ward Museum & Historic Site’s “U.S. Colored Troops Living History Encampment” (Apr. 8) portraying the history, training and soldier life of African-American units associated with the Civil War defenses of Washington and “Fort Ward Tour and Civil War Concert” (May 20)with a soldier-led tour of Fort Ward and period music by the Federal City Brass Band.

Ten visitor experiences are returning for a second year, including the top-visited "Mercy Street"-inspired exhibit, “Who These Wounded Are: The Extraordinary Stories of the Mansion House Hospital” at Carlyle House, once the Green family home adjacent to the Mansion House hospital, featuring an interpretation of period hospital rooms and doctor/officer housing, plus stories of nurse Mary Phinney and spy Frank Stringfellow. Kimpton Hotel Monaco Alexandria will continue to offer its "Have Mercy" package with "Mercy Street"-inspired perks.

"Mercy Street" season one took place in the spring of 1862 just outside of Washington, D.C. in Alexandria, a border town between North and South and the longest Union-occupied city of the war. Ruled under martial law, Alexandria was the central melting pot of the region, filled with civilians, female volunteers, doctors, wounded soldiers from both sides, free blacks, enslaved and contraband (escaped enslaved people living behind Union lines) African-Americans, speculators and spies. "Mercy Street" follows the lives of all of these characters, who collide at Mansion House, the Green family’s luxury hotel, which has been taken over and transformed into a Union Army hospital.

"Mercy Street" season two picks up directly from the dramatic events at the end of the season one finale, continuing to explore the growing chaos within Alexandria, the complicated interpersonal dynamics of Dr. Foster, Nurse Mary and the Mansion House staff, the increasingly precarious position of the Green family and the changing world of the burgeoning African-American population. The season will introduce a number of new elements, taking viewers closer to the fight and into the halls of Confederate power, all set against the intensifying war, starting with the Seven Days’ Battle and culminating with Antietam.

PHOTOS: Courtesy of PBS/Erik Heinila; second photo: actress Mary Elizabeth Winstead portrays Mary Phinney and actor McKinley Belcher is Samuel Diggs in PBS' "Mercy Street," returning for a second season in January; photo by Antony Platt for PBS. Photo courtesy of Visit Alexandria