The Washington Post

December 11, 2007

Project That Will Restore Slave Home is Approved

About a decade ago, Arlean Hill joined a community group devoted to restoring a stone building about the size of a two-car garage that had once housed as many as 32 slaves.

Little did she know that the slave quarters in rural Loudoun County, crumbling and overgrown from years of neglect, would find its rebirth as part of a large development of shops, restaurants, offices and more than 1,000 houses in one of Loudoun's fastest-growing corners.

Last week, the Board of Supervisors approved the Arcola Center project southwest of Dulles International Airport, the final piece of a 400-acre complex that the developer, Buchanan Partners, said will be built with the restored slave quarters as its centerpiece.

"This is part of Loudoun's history that has been lost," said Hill, president of Friends of the Slave Quarters, a volunteer group. "When you tell [history], you have to tell the good, the bad and the ugly about it to give people a true sense of what Loudoun was like."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/08/AR2007120800114.html