Maggie L. Walker House: Historic Furnishings Report, Volume 1 - Historical Data

Denker, Ellen

This report fills a void in the National Park Service's (NPS) documentary history of the Maggie 1. Walker National Historic Site, because there is no previous NPS research report on the furnishings of this home. The current report documents the appearance and use of the home throughout Walker family ownership, focusing on the years between 1928 and 1934. This period of significance was chosen because it encompasses the last structural change to the house (the addition of an elevator) in 1928 and the death of the principal owner, Maggie 1. Walker, in 1934. The furnishing report draws together primary documents, photographic records, legal documents and official reports, oral history interviews (preexisting and new), and research on the objects. Historic paint and wallpaper analyses were carried out by the NPS in 1999 and the results have also been consulted in preparing the present Historic Furnishing Report. A Furnishing Plan for the home is included as Part IT of this report. Development of the Furnishing Plan was based on a series of individual Toom studies using the current inventory, but including infonnation from the historic structure report, paint and wallpaper analyses, oral history interviews, and photographic and documentary evidence. Where direct documentation is not available for the home, suggestions for furnishings are made based on comparative research in collections of similar context and in home furnishing trade materials of the period. Maggie Lena Walker (ca. 1867-1934), the daughter of Elizabeth Draper, a fonner Richmond, Virginia, slave and Eccles Cuthbert, Confederate soldier and post-war correspondent for New York Herald, became a successful businesswoman and prominent civic leader whose career and accomplishments aided the economic empowennent of black Americans locally, regionally, and nationally. As one of the first women in America to create, charter, and direct a bank, she also holds a prominent place in women's history. The house at 110 112 East Leigh Street in the J ackson Ward section of Richmond was built in 1883 and purchased in 1904 by Maggie Walker and her husband, Armstead Walker, Jr. At the tum of the century, Jackson Ward was a vital African American neighborhood of property owners and entrepreneurs that was acclaimed as a successful and significant black community in the United States. Leigh Street was its premier residential avenue.

Maggie L. Walker House: Historic Furnishings Report, Volume 1 - Historical Data

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