A historic townhouse at 1315 Duke St., once the headquarters of the country's largest slave-trading company and now a museum, is up for sale for $2.1 million.
The Washington Post reports that the owner, the Northern Virginia Urban League, put it up for sale after going through a tough time keeping up the payments; the League is hoping the City will purchase the property, the newspaper reported.
The City describes the property as once being "part of the headquarters for the largest domestic slave trading firm in the United States, Franklin and Armfield. Enslaved people were brought from the Chesapeake Bay area and forced to the slave markets in Natchez, Mississippi and New Orleans either by foot or ship."
"The Freedom House is a three-and-a-half-story structure of gray-painted brick with a large, three-story rear brick L-shaped addition. Despite alterations to both its exterior and interior, the Franklin and Armfield building still stands as a reminder of a dark chapter in U.S. and human history," according to the National Park Service.
A National Historic Landmark, Freedom House Museum is located in the basement level and bears a connection to the story depicted in the Oscar-winning film "12 Years a Slave." The museum features original artifacts and first-person narratives told through video and exhibits.
The National Park Service describes the slave-trading business operated at the site in the 1800s this way:
"Based in Alexandria, Virginia, Isaac Franklin and John Armfield were the largest traders of enslaved African Americans in the nation between 1828 and 1836. The men bought enslaved people at low prices in the Upper South and sold them at much higher prices in the Lower South. While Armfield remained in Alexandria to purchase bondsmen for shipment south, Franklin handled sales in New Orleans and Natchez. Franklin and Armfield orchestrated the trafficking of thousands of enslaved African Americans from their Alexandria office to the horrific labor conditions of the lower South in what has been called the Second Middle Passage."
Read much more about the historic property here.
Photo for Visit Alexandria by R. Kennedy
Freedom House
Read more about the slave trade in Alexandria from the Black History Museum.
