Mary McLeod Bethune Council House National Historic Site

The Mary McLeod Bethune Council House National Historic Site preserves the house of Mary McLeod Bethune, located in Northwest Washington, D.C., at 1318 Vermont Avenue NW. National Park Service rangers offer tours of the home, and a video about Bethune's life is shown. It is part of the Logan Circle Historic District. The house is about five blocks north-northeast of the McPherson Square Washington Metro on the Blue and Orange Lines, and about five blocks south of the U Street Metro station on the Green and Yellow Lines. It is a half block southwest of Logan Circle. About the site The site consists of a three-story Victorian townhouse and a two-story carriage house. The carriage house contained the National Archives for Black Women's History, until 2014, when the National Park Service relocated the records to the National Park Service Museum Resource Center in Landover, Maryland. The archives and a research center at the property are open only by appointment. Bethune made her home in the townhouse from 1943 to 1955. She purchased it for $15,500. Bethune lived on the third floor, while the National Council of Negro Women occupied the first and second floors. The floor plan of the home remains unchanged from the days when Bethune lived there, and most of the furnishings are original to the home and owned by Bethune and the NCNW.