Frederick Douglass Dwellings Collection

Object Details

Biographical/Historical note: Built as temporary housing for World War II workers, the Frederick Douglass Dwellings were located on land previously owned by Tobias Henson, a former slave, who, after purchasing his freedom and that of his family, purchased and developed a 24-acre tract called The Ridge. Henson added to his landholdings and by the 1870s his family was the principal landholder in the black community of Stantontown; they remained on the land until the 1940s, when the federal government condemned the community to build the Frederick Douglass Dwellings. Deemed uninhabitable in 1998 and left vacant, the Frederick Douglass Dwellings were demolished in 2000 to make way for a new mixed-income community.

Citation: Frederick Douglass Dwellings collection, Anacostia Community Museum Archives, Smithsonian Institution, gift of members of the Southeast Voices.

Type: Collection descriptions; Archival materials; Magazines (periodicals); Slides (photographs); Photographic prints; Black-and-white photographs; Clippings; Color photographs

Topic: African Americans; Public housing; African Americans -- Social life and customs; African American neighborhoods

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