Alexandria’s Freedom House Museum has received $1 million in Virginia’s approved two-year budget to support its continued renovations.
The $1 million in state funding provided in the 2027 fiscal year and matching city funds through the Office of Historic Alexandria will support interior rehabilitation and accessibility improvements at 1315 Duke Street. Historic Alexandria director Gretchen M. Bulova told ALXnow the upgrades will provide public access to the basement where enslaved men were held when it was home to one of the country’s largest slave trading companies.
“Providing access to this space is essential to telling the full history of the site,” Bulova said.
This phase of the renovations is currently underway. Exterior rehabilitation of the historic building was completed in September 2025 by Oak Grove Restoration. That exterior work focused on stabilizing the historic structure and restoring the front facade to its appearance from 1828 to 1861.
Freedom House Museum had hosted multiple slave-trading businesses over its history, including the large Franklin & Armfield slave trading firm. It was later used as a military prison and for housing. The Northern Virginia Urban League bought the property in 1997 and sold it to the city in 2020. The site is on the National Register of Historic Places.
The Office of Historic Alexandria worked through the standard city process to request the state funding, with the legislative director leading advocacy for the city’s legislative priorities.
“State funding helps preserve nationally significant historic resources that tell Virginia’s full history,” Bulova said. “These investments support the rehabilitation of aging historic buildings, improve public access and accessibility, protect irreplaceable cultural resources, and ensure these sites can educate and inspire future generations while contributing to heritage tourism and the local economy.”
The approved two-year budget also includes about $1.4 billion more for public education, including 4 percent raises for teachers and school support staff, and 3.5 percent raises for state employees in each of the two years.
Before the budget deal, the Virginia House and Senate were divided on whether to keep a sales and use tax exemption for data centers. The exemption was ultimately kept in the budget. However, the budget adds a new data center electricity consumption tax, which would charge a rate of $0.011 per kilowatt hour based on the electricity a data center uses each month.
