The Woodlawn Slave Quarters Preservation Task Force plans to request an additional $125,000 to restore the deteriorating structures.
“Every day that there is a storm is a day closer to that building coming apart,” said Task Force Member Tom O?Connor, adding that the Woodlawn Slave Quarters lost rocks that were part of the buildings during recent storms.
The task force, commissioned by the Columbia Association, will seek the financial assistance for basic exterior renovations and for replacing the collapsed roof of the quarters on the site of the Historic Woodlawn Manor off Old Annapolis Road. More money would have to be raised to restore its interior.
The quarters, made from rocks collected from the nearby Red Branch of the Little Patuxent River, could collapse over the winter, said Task Force Member Pearl Atkinson-Stewart.
The task force wants to protect the delicate structure, where slaves once lived and worked, reads a historic study completed by the association and Preservation Howard County, a nonprofit that advocates for historic structures.
“We need to move quickly. The building is so unprotected, and the winter will be coming up. We just don?t know how much longer it can stay,” Atkinson-Stewart said.
In addition, developer Ron Brasher, of Brasher Design in Columbia, is planning to construct a 74,000-square-foot office building next to the quarters.
“Itwould be best to have it secure before all the big tractors start moving the earth around,” O?Connor said.
The task force has spent about half of the initial $125,000 the association gave it last year, on engineering, removing vegetation and constructing wooden support boards around the ruin.
“We encourage you to fund this as a priority initiative as the walls are, literally, ready to come tumbling down,” wrote Mary Catherine Cochran, president of Preservation Howard County, in a recent letter to the association.
If you go
» The Woodlawn Slave Quarters Preservation Task force will request $125,000 at the next board meeting, to be held at 7:30 p.m. on July 13 in the Board Room of the Columbia Association Headquarters on Wincopin Circle in Columbia.
