Photo by Alexandria Living Magazine
The front entrance of Woodlawn mansion.
Tucked away off of Route 1 just south of Jeff Todd Way, and surrounded by land belonging to Fort Belvoir, sit two historic houses owned by the National Trust for Historic Preservation – Woodlawn and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Pope-Leighey House.
At first glance the two houses seem very different. Woodlawn is a 9,000 square foot brick mansion that was built between 1800 and 1805 as a gift for Martha Washington’s granddaughter, Eleanor “Nellie” Park Custis and her husband, Major Lawrence Lewis. It was built on a hill with views of the Potomac River and Mount Vernon in the distance. The house was designed by Dr. William Thornton, the same architect who designed the U.S. Capitol.
Pope-Leighey House is a 1,200 square foot home designed by the father of modern architecture, Frank Lloyd Wright. The house was commissioned as a middle-class residence by the Pope family in 1939 and was originally located in Falls Church, Virginia. In 1946, the Pope family sold the house to the Leighey family. It was purchased by the National Trust and relocated to Woodlawn property in 1965 in order to preserve the house from demolition. It was moved to its current location on the property in 1995 after the ground at the first spot proved unstable.
Now, the two homes have a new executive director.
Photo courtesy of Shawn Halifax
Shawn Halifax
Shawn Halifax spent the majority of his career working for Charleston County Parks in Charleston, South Carolina. He was hired as the county’s first public historian in 1998 when he helped open the Caw Caw interpretive center, a site that included former rice plantations.
His role at Woodlawn Pope-Leighey is not his first professional venture into Virginia. He worked at Fort Monroe from 2010-2013 when it was transitioning ownership from the Department of the Army to the Commonwealth of Virginia. Halifax said he learned a lot of valuable lessons but the intense politicization of the transition motivated him to return to work for Charleston County Parks, this time overseeing the opening of McLeod Plantation Historic Site.
“What we were doing there [McLeod] was taking the plantation museum and saying our focus is going to be on the experiences of the enslaved people and their descendants.” Instead of focusing only on the antebellum period, interpretation included the whole historic arc of the site like the important role it played during Reconstruction and the stories of the descendants of enslaved people who lived on the site as late as 1990.
Halifax, who started his new position at Woodlawn Pope-Leighey in October, has been taking the past few months to absorb the history of the site and its role in the surrounding community. He intends to use his leadership experience from previous jobs to help revitalize the site in a way that takes its unique history and location into account.
“Coming into Woodlawn and Pope-Leighey House as the Executive Director I am prepared to take a site that’s been around for as long as this site has been and say ok, how do we move this deeper into the 21st century?” Halifax explained.
Halifax does not want to come in and make changes based on his vision alone. He would like to establish an advisory council or group so that the community has a voice in the site’s future. “I see my role as executive director as not the person that’s making all of the decisions about the direction we are going to go and establishing the vision, that’s something that I want to do collaboratively,” said Halifax.
He would like the community to feel like the site belongs to them and see the number of people who feel ownership of the site include a broader and more diverse group of people than it has in the past. “There is an incredible opportunity for a place like this to not just be a historic site but to really be a community asset and resource and to be engaged with and collaborate with the local community,” Halifax said.
Halifax believes that the site, as a former site of slavery, has a moral obligation to address its role in the current issues that face our society today, like racism, and not just to call out the past, but to create an opportunity for healing in the future. “We have to be transparent and accept responsibility and find ways to make this a place where people will feel like they can be here, they belong here…when I think about vision here, I think that a place like this can be part of the solution,” Halifax explained.
He believes that the community engagement will in turn help with drawing tourism to the site. He believes that visitors are looking for authenticity. “If a site is something that is important to its community, that’s the kind of experience that people are looking for – something beyond just a site that is a marker of a period of time in history,” Halifax said.
Photo by Alexandria Living Magazine
Frank Lloyd Wright's Pope-Leighey House
On the surface, Woodlawn and Pope-Leighey House may seem like a challenge to interpret together but according to Halifax, they are actually connected in powerful ways. “At Woodlawn and at Pope-Leighey you have the work of two of the most pre-eminent architects of their time that are now on the same property. Those two architects had very strong messages they were sending in their design and in their architecture,”
Woodlawn was built high on a hill, sending a message of wealth, power and elitism. It was a place of security and refuge for the white Lewis family which shut them off from what was happening around them, making them overseers instead of direct participants. On the other hand, Pope-Leighey house was built to blend into the landscape. Its large number of windows allow the house to open up to and become part of its surroundings. To Halifax, the two sites provide an opportunity to compare and contrast two very different perspectives. “Both of them are speaking to a larger vision of what the American dream is,” explained Halifax.
The site’s history goes beyond its connection to George Washington or its architectural significance. After the Lewis family, abolitionists acquired the house and established an integrated community of free blacks, Quakers and Baptists. A Quaker meeting house still stands on the property. “I think that when we start looking at those big themes in history, about who we are and why we are who we are that Woodlawn (and Pope-Leighey) have a lot to offer that conversation and a unique voice in that conversation,” Halifax emphasized.
Halifax is working to build up programming and events. Favorites like Twilight and Tipples Tours and the Annual Needlework Show (which runs through March 31) will likely continue but will be joined by educational offerings for K-12 and programming that reflects the full scope of the site’s history. The site has a little known connection with theatre and was the home of playwright Paul Kester in the early 1900s.
Halifax would also like to increase local partnerships within the community like the one it has with Arcadia Farms, which leases property from Woodlawn and operates an active farm there. The organization works to provide equitable access to healthy food and works with veterans, giving them marketable skills as they transition out of the military.
Woodlawn has commonly been used as a site for weddings and other private events but Halifax would like to start a community conversation about what types of events are appropriate or not appropriate for a former site of enslavement. “I’m not ruling anything out, but I am willing to ask questions about everything, and I’m willing to ask different people these questions. It can’t just be a question that the National Trust asks itself, it has to move beyond that. In order for us to be that community asset, we have to engage the community in that conversation,” Halifax argued.
You can visit Woodlawn and Pope-Leighey House at 9000 Richmond Hwy. The site is currently open for the 59th Annual Needlework Show which runs through Thursday, March 31st. It will then be closed for two weeks before it reopens for tours on April 15 which are offered Friday through Monday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Photo by Alexandria Living Magazine
The backside of Woodlawn mansion.
