City of Alexandria, Virginia
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MEMORANDUM
DATE: FEBRUARY 7, 2018
TO: THE HONORABLE MAYOR AND MEMBERS OF CITY COUNCIL
FROM: MARK B. JINKS, CITY MANAGER /s/
DOCKET TITLE:
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Presentation of Freedom House at 1315 Duke Street as a Publicly Accessible Museum Through a Loan and Partnership Agreement.
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ISSUE: Preservation of Freedom House, which has local and national significance to slavery, as a publicly accessible museum
RECOMMENDATION: That City Council authorize the City Manager to sign a loan agreement with the Northern Virginia Urban League in regard to the Freedom House historic building at 1315 Duke Street consistent with the terms and conditions of the attached Interim Museum Preservation Proposal.
BACKGROUND: Freedom House at 1315 Duke Street which is a 8,850 square foot building that was constructed circa 1828 served as the headquarters and slave pen of the largest slave trading firms in the United States in the first half of the 19th Century. It is an historic structure that has national and local significance to slavery.
The surviving building, once part of a block-large complex, is one of the last vestiges of American slave trading businesses. Between 1828 and 1861, it is estimated that a million enslaved African Americans passed through this landmark, victims of human trafficking, in America's desire for slave labor.
While the location of the 1828 Franklin and Armfield slave pen has great significance to Virginia's slave history, its reach is wider stretching to the Deep South - where slaves were needed to harvest cotton, and labor on sugar and rice plantations. Before John Armfield and Isaac Franklin sold the business in 1836, they had control of half of the coastal slave trade from Virginia to New Orleans with Armfield managing the trade in Alexandria while Franklin was based in Louisiana.
During the boon days for the slave trade, the building a...
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