This is one of the rare images we have of Frederick Douglass at home. You’re looking at a grainy 1876 photograph of Douglass standing on the front lawn of his house at 320 A Street NE, on Capitol Hill, with family members gathered on the porch. This was his first home in Washington, years before he moved to the grand estate at Cedar Hill that most people picture today. The house still stands, and you can walk right past it.
Douglass moved his family to Washington around 1872, and this Capitol Hill house is where they landed. He was already one of the most famous men in America by then, an escaped slave turned abolitionist, orator, and newspaper editor. The figures you can make out on the porch are family members, caught on an ordinary day at home.
He held onto this house even after 1877, when he and his wife Anna moved across the Anacostia River to the hilltop estate known as Cedar Hill. That later home became the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site, and it tends to overshadow this earlier address. But 320 A Street NE is where the Douglass family first put down roots in the capital.
Today the building houses the Frederick Douglass Museum and Caring Hall of Fame, restored and open for tours by appointment. From the sidewalk, the view looks remarkably close to what W.W. Core photographed 150 years ago.
Here’s almost the same view today on Google Street View.