The Carter G. Woodson Home Is Open Again on 9th Street. Here's How to Spend a Visit

Carter G. Woodson paid $8,000 for the rowhouse at 1538 9th Street NW in 1922. Restoring it, along with the two houses next door, took about twenty years and roughly $14.2 million, according to The Washington Informer. The National Park Service scheduled the public reopening for Saturday, Nov. 7, and regular tours started on Tuesday, Nov. 10.

Two blocks south, at the corner of 9th and O, another long-delayed building reopened this season. 1400 Ninth St. NW had been vacant for more than two decades. It reopened in late August as Genika Cafe. With both buildings open, this short stretch of 9th Street now gives you a full daytime outing: a guided tour of the house where Negro History Week began, a church that has been Woodson's neighbor since 1924, and an Ethiopian-named coffee house on the corner. All of it fits inside a three-block walk.

Two Addresses, Two Long Waits

Both projects kept their historic fronts. At the Woodson Home, the Park Service took the façade and rear wing apart brick by brick, numbered the façade bricks, and put each one back where it came from. Original moldings, doors, trim and staircases were restored. At 1400 Ninth, Shaw-based United Investments bought the building, then renovated and expanded it while keeping its historic façade.

What's Behind the Door at 1538 Ninth

For nearly three decades this house was more than Woodson's home. It was also the headquarters of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History and of his publishing company, The Associated Publishers. Woodson started Negro History Week here in 1926, and it is now celebrated as Black History Month. That makes 2026 the hundredth year since the week began, and it's the year the house reopened to the public.

The house tour covers Woodson's offices, the room where his publishing staff got books ready for mailing, and the bedroom where he died in 1950. His desk, his library and the original hardwood floors have been preserved. Woodson wrote The Mis-Education of the Negro in his office here in 1933 and published it through The Associated Publishers, right in the house. The association and the publisher stayed in the building until 1971. Congress named it a National Historic Site in 2003, and the Park Service bought it from the association in 2005.

John Fowler, the site's supervisory ranger, described the house's role to the Informer this way:

"He wrote the books, he taught the teachers, he did the research, he preserved the rare objects, manuscripts. All of that happened here, in this home."

In the same Informer piece, Fowler said that in his 16 years with the Park Service he kept hearing that the Woodson home "is coming." ASALH president Dr. Karsonya "Kaye" Wise Whitehead summed up the reopening in four words: "The walls are talking."

The two rowhouses just north of the home, 1540 and 1542 Ninth Street, were bought in 2005 to support the visitor experience. The new visitor center is two doors down from the house, and house tours go through it on their way into Woodson's rooms.

How Tours Work Now

The Park Service's reopening announcement lays out a fixed schedule.

1. Standard tours start at 9 a.m., 12:15 p.m., 1:15 p.m., 3 p.m., 3:30 p.m. and 4 p.m. You can book up to 15 tickets per transaction.
2. Group tours start at 9:30 a.m., 10:45 a.m. and 2 p.m., with up to 60 tickets per transaction.
3. Booking is through Recreation.gov or by phone at 877-444-6777. Walk-ins are welcome if a tour has room.
4. Cost: the tickets themselves are free, but each one carries a $1 service fee. School groups pay a flat $10.

The 9 a.m. tour is the only standard morning slot. If you can't make it, the next standard tour isn't until 12:15. The afternoon is busier, with three standard tours packed between 3 and 4 p.m. Because the site is open Tuesday through Saturday, Saturday is the only weekend day you can go. That matters when you plan lunch, because several Blagden Alley kitchens open early on weekends.

Two Blocks South, Coffee at O Street

Genika Cafe takes its name from the Amharic word for a single-origin Arabica coffee grown in Ethiopia. Owner Gennet Tebebu cut the ribbon on Aug. 26 with Ward 2 Councilmember Brooke Pinto and neighbors from around Shaw. During the day, the cafe serves its own coffee as drip, pour over, French press or espresso, along with pastries baked fresh and sandwiches. You can also buy the beans to take home. In the evening it becomes a tavern serving beer, wine and classic cocktails, according to MidCity DC News.

The cafe sits on the northwest corner of O and 9th, so it's a short walk south from the Woodson Home. That makes it an easy stop on either side of a tour. After a 4 p.m. tour, the room is moving from coffee service to its tavern hours.

The Rest of a 9th Street Afternoon

Shiloh Baptist Church at 1500 Ninth St. NW is the anchor between the two reopened buildings. The congregation moved to this site in 1924, two years after Woodson bought his house up the block. It became a major religious and community-service center, according to the DC Office of Planning's African American Heritage Trail. The Park Service used Shiloh as the starting point for the reopening-day tours. In October 2026, the church installed its seventh pastor, as noted on its website.

For food on either side of a tour, here is what's within a few blocks:

• Unconventional Diner, 1207 9th St. NW, is open daily from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. and serves brunch every day. It's the easiest early stop before the 9 a.m. tour.
• All-Purpose Pizza, 1250 9th St. NW, opens at 11:30 a.m. on weekends and serves dinner on weekdays.
• Tiger Fork, 922 N Street Rear in Blagden Alley, starts food service at 11:30 a.m. on weekends and 5 p.m. on weekdays. That makes it a Saturday lunch option before a 12:15 or 1:15 tour.
• Calico, 50 Blagden Alley NW, opens at 1 p.m. on weekends and 5 p.m. on weekdays.
• The Dabney, 122 Blagden Alley NW, serves dinner Tuesday through Saturday. It's the evening bookend to a late-afternoon tour.

While you're in Blagden Alley, you can see the DC Alley Museum, a public collection of murals painted on the alley's garage doors, including work by Shaw-connected artists. If you'd rather end the day farther up 9th Street, Pourtraits DC at 1905 9th St. NW opened in early November with cocktails, art and reservations, as PoPville reported.

A Saturday that uses all of it could look like this. Start with breakfast at Unconventional Diner, take the 9 a.m. tour at 1538, stop at Shiloh on the walk back down 9th, then head to Blagden Alley for lunch at Tiger Fork once it opens at 11:30.

Whenever I host friends from out of town, I'm always looking for a Shaw afternoon that's about more than a dinner reservation, and the Woodson Home on 9th Street is now my first suggestion. If you're thinking about how a block like this fits into your own plans, or you just want a few more spots to pair with a tour, reach out to me at Jen Angotti. Let's talk about your next move.