Twenty-five years ago, seven African American artists bought a block and a half of rundown shotgun houses in the Third Ward, restored them, and turned them into a work of living art called Project Row Houses. Today some serve as artist studios or exhibition spaces, while others are home to single mothers; the nonprofit has expanded, getting into social work while offering free art classes and a host of other programs. The original block of homes, now considered a “social sculpture,” is featured in a permanent display at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. This month PRH will take a group of Third Ward children to D.C. to see it. “Your neighborhood may not have all the resources of a River Oaks or a West U, but your neighborhood is important,” executive director Eureka Gilkey likes to tell them. “And here it is in this national museum not even a block from the White House.”
