Restoring Honor to an Icon's Home

Park Service Plans Museum in Shaw to Recognize Father of Black History Month

Reginald Genus, in front of the former home of Carter G. Woodson in Northwest Washington, lives across the street. (By Larry Morris -- The Washington Post)

For a heady span of about 35 years, a Shaw townhouse that recently has sheltered broken glass, shredded blinds and an occasional vagrant was an epicenter of massive change in the country.

Inside 1538 Ninth St. NW, the father of African American history and Black History Month, Carter G. Woodson, convinced the world of the importance of studying and understanding the culture, contributions and origins of black Americans. In the first half of the 1900s, it was where a subset of American studies was born and where the first black publishing company in the nation pressed books.

After decades of decay and neglect, the house is to begin its resurrection today, when it is officially designated a National Historic Site during a ceremony at neighboring Shiloh Baptist Church. The house will be handed over to the U.S. Park Service for rehabilitation into a museum and visitors center.

"Now a priceless American treasure will be saved and preserved, the nation's pride and purpose in celebrating Black History Month will be better understood, and the celebration and the city no longer will be marred by the poor condition of the home of a great scholar," said Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.), who had introduced a bill to turn the home into a museum.

The Woodson house was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1976, but that brought little more than a plaque on the facade.

In summer 2001, a group of schoolchildren working with the Shaw EcoVillage design corps volunteered to clean up the overgrown yard and solicited 60 letters from residents to send to Norton, urging the home's preservation.

Nearly five years later, the home is being transferred to the Park Service after it paid nearly $500,000 to the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, which Woodson co-founded at the house in 1915. The Park Service also will rehabilitate three adjoining properties so the association can move back into space it left 35 years ago.

"This will mean so much to the neighborhood. For years, neighbors have been looking and looking at the building, wishing something would happen," said Alexander Padro, the advisory neighborhood commissioner for the area. "I found some seniors here who remembered Dr. Woodson. He gave them candy when they were small children. They called him 'Book Man' because he was always hauling around books," Padro said.

Woodson was born in 1875 in Virginia, the son of former slaves. He worked as a coal miner to put himself through school and was the second black person to receive a doctorate from Harvard University, after W.E.B. Du Bois. He was an influential author, scholar, journalist and activist. While he lived at the house, from 1915 until his death in 1950, Woodson's parlor hosted some of the black intelligentsia's great debates and discussions.

The Park Service will take on the painstaking task of reconstructing the office and living quarters to look as they did in Woodson's heyday. Its workers will research photographs and papers and interview anyone who remembers the home, said Gayle Hazelwood, superintendent for National Capital Parks-East.

The project also will require fundraising from the private sector, said Sylvia Cyrus-Albritton, executive director of Woodson's association.

In a 2001 report, the Park Service figured that renovation and development of exhibits and a visitors center would cost $2.9 million and that the historic site, which could draw 10,000 to 30,000 visitors annually, would cost about $100,000 a year to operate.

That kind of museum would forever change the street of Reginald Genus's boyhood summers.

Genus, 39, spent much of his childhood at his family's home across the street from the Woodson house. His great-uncle, a craftsman, used to work on Woodson's house and told stories of the exciting happenings inside. Genus was a kid and didn't listen, something he regrets.

"This house has been in my family for three generations. Then it was empty for 18 years," said the building engineer, who has moved back into his old home and restores it in his spare time.

He often looks across the street at the Woodson house and thinks, "That was history being made there. Real history. I wish I remembered what my great-uncle said."