Restoring the enslaved quarters in the attic garret.
Made possible by the Pennsylvania Historical & Museum commission
Recipient of the 2024 Pennsylvania Historic Preservation Award
Telling the story of enslavement and abolition in Colonial Pennsylvania.
In September 2021, the Naomi Wood Trust received a matching grant from the Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Commission to help fund interior renovations to Woodford Mansion rooms that were used as living and work spaces by the enslaved African or indentured European servants. The project, completed in April 2024, restored two rooms in the second and third floors to their eighteenth-century appearance, removing twentieth-century changes to the spaces. These changes provide a more historically accurate understanding of life in Colonial and Federal America and help to tell the story of enslavement and abolition in Pennsylvania in the eighteenth century.
The third floor space is believed to have been originally used as a sleeping quarters for enslaved residents and other servants.
A second floor room that would have served as a pantry or staging area. Servants would have used this pantry while cleaning the second floor or bringing items up and down the narrow servant’s stair from Woodford’s old kitchen to the second floor ballroom and other spaces used by Woodford’s owners. In the twentieth century, the third floor garret space was converted for use as storage, and before that, as a bedroom and bathroom for a housekeeper who worked for Woodford's first Trustee, Daniel Huntoon. The second floor room had been converted into a public restroom in the late 1920s.
The restoration project opened up two new rooms for public display and interpretation. The attic garret is furnished with items that replicate how enslaved and indentured servants lived and worked there. The second floor public restroom is now a pantry or staging area, and the public restroom moved to the first floor in Woodford’s twentieth-century staff kitchen. The kitchen was also renovated to accommodate the addition of the more accessible public restroom.
Restoring spaces to their 18th- century appearance.
Discover more about the project.
To learn more about the research behind the Interior Renovations Project, watch this presentation by Curator and Site Manager Jeff Duncan.