Frederick Douglass' Growlery

On the manicured grounds of Cedar Hill in Southeast Washington, D.C. sits a modest stone cabin that feels curiously intimate next to the grand Victorian house that once belonged to Frederick Douglass. This unassuming, single-room structure was Douglass’s “Growlery,” a word borrowed from Charles Dickens’s Bleak House to mean a place to growl and brood in peace.

As one of the most prominent orators and writers in the 19th-century U.S., Douglass needed time for solitude. At the Growlery, he was able to retreat from visitors and family to read, write, and mull over important ideas about America’s future. A reporter who was allowed into the space in 1889 described a cozy fire burning and a desk stuffed full of books and papers.

The National Park Service rebuilt the Growlery in 1981 on its original footprint, using many of the materials from the original outbuilding. Today, visitors walking the Cedar Hill grounds can step inside this tiny retreat and imagine Douglass seated at his simple desk, reflecting on the state of the nation.