Reproduction of the Growlery at Frederick Douglass National Historic Site

When Frederick Douglass purchased the home he called Cedar Hill in 1877, it came with roughly ten acres of land. He purchased an additional six acres the next year. During his time there were a number of outbuildings on the property, but all have been torn down over the years, plus the property has been whittled down to just eight acres.

You are welcome to stroll the grounds of Cedar Hill during your visit. There is a garden and a reconstruction of one outbuilding, the Growlery (Charles Dickens came up with the word growlery—a place to growl—in his book Bleak House). This was where Douglass came to be by himself, the forerunner of the modern day “man cave.” The original Growlery had a fireplace, a desk, and a couch. The current Growlery was built in 1981 using materials from the original building. It is located exactly where it was when Douglass was alive.

Directly behind the Cedar Hill home is a separate structure that was built in 1928 for the resident house and groundskeeper. In 1987, the building was dedicated to Gladys Parham, the last caretaker of the property. She was hired by the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs and the Frederick Douglass Memorial and Historical Association in 1949 and continued as caretaker up until her death in 1983. Starting in 1965 she worked for the National Park Service. Prior to that, she often went unpaid, and in fact spent roughly $1,000 of her own money on maintenance costs. In addition to taking care of the property, Parham also conducted tours of the house.