Frederick Douglass National Historic Site United States

Legendary

The site preserves the home of prominent African-American leader Frederick Douglass.

Photo by David

Behind the main house sits a tiny one-room stone building with a desk, a stove, and a bed. Frederick Douglass called it his Growlery.

It was where he went when he wanted to be left alone to work, think, or simply grumble in peace. His family knew not to disturb him there.

Douglass was born enslaved in Maryland in 1818. He taught himself to read, escaped to freedom as a young man, and became one of the most famous speakers and writers in the world.

He wrote three books about his own life. The last one, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, was published in 1881, and he worked on parts of it right here at this house.

Douglass moved to Washington, D.C. in the early 1870s to run a newspaper. Money was tight after the newspaper closed and a bank he led collapsed.

Then in 1877, President Rutherford B. Hayes appointed him United States Marshal for the District of Columbia. It made him the first Black American to hold a federal job requiring approval from the Senate.

Some lawyers tried to block his confirmation. Douglass won anyway and served in the role for four years.

Not long after, he bought this hilltop property in the Anacostia neighborhood. He and his wife Anna named it Cedar Hill.

The house has 20 rooms and sits on a hill with a clear view across the river. Douglass filled it with more than a thousand books and kept working there for the rest of his life.

He held several more government jobs after his time as marshal, including a post representing the United States in Haiti. He kept writing and giving speeches the whole time.

On February 20, 1895, Douglass came home from a women's rights meeting and collapsed in the hallway. He died that evening, at 77 years old.

His second wife, Helen, spent years working to preserve the house. It joined the national park system in 1962 and became a National Historic Site in 1988.

Tour the house, where about 70 percent of the furniture and objects actually belonged to Douglass. Step into the reconstructed Growlery and see how small his private workspace really was. Then stand on the front porch and look out at the U.S. Capitol dome, the view a man born enslaved chose to wake up to every morning.