Repair the Wall Fund
A nonprofit fundraiser supporting
Lee-Fendall House Museum & GardenLee-Fendall House Museum needs help urgently to repair the collapse of our 220-year-old garden wall.
$24,330
raised by 98 people
$125,000 goal
Matching opportunity!
A member of the museum's board of directors has generously offered to match up to $2,000 in new donations to repair the wall! Help us meet this exciting opportunity as we close in our first goal of $14,000 to get an engineering plan for the wall's repair.
On Saturday, June 12, 2021, a 70-foot portion of the original brick wall surrounding Lee-Fendall's historic garden collapsed. Originally built of hand-formed brick in a Flemish bond pattern over a fieldstone foundation and likely constructed by enslaved workers, the wall dates to around the year 1800 and has been an integral part of our historic fabric. It post-dates the construction of our house by only about 15 years and tells an important part of Lee-Fendall's story and of Alexandria's.
Museum staff are working closely with Alexandria's Board of Architectural Review and with local firms specializing in historic masonry preservation on a multi-phase plan to repair the wall. This will be a major project for the museum, costing over $125,000 in full. Our first and immediate need is for $14,000 in funding to cover the cost of working with an architectural engineer on a plan for the repair which uses the original bricks.
We look forward to sharing details of the repair process with the Alexandria community as it goes forward, and are grateful for the community's support as we work to repair the wall according to historic preservation standards.