D.C. Alley Museum

About this audio guide

This guide to the D.C. Alley Museum in Shaw traces a block that once held horse-stable tenements packed with Black families doing the city's unskilled labor, so cramped that as many as nine tenants shared two rooms. It follows the alley's collapse after Dr. King's 1968 assassination, the 1990 preservation rules that kept the old stable walls standing, and the restaurants that later moved in next door. You'll hear from muralist Bill Warrell, who painted here in 2015 and remembered the block as full of artists, weirdos and punks. Look closely at the garage doors as you walk the alley.