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, but the current building is not furnished. It is located exactly where it was when Douglass was alive and was built with materials from the original building.

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