SeattleChange
The Workhouse Arts Center, a program of the Lorton Arts Foundation, provides essential visual and performing arts studio and exhibition space as well as engaging arts education programs for people of all ages and artistic abilities.
The mission of the Workhouse Arts Center is to enrich the lives of all within its reach by creating a vibrant cultural community that fosters a diverse offering of arts, education, social, and entertainment experiences for people of all ages.
In the early 1900s, President Theodore Roosevelt commissioned the purchase of land in Virginia to build a workhouse for DC's non-violent criminals. The first prisoners were men arrested for public drunkenness, petty theft, simple assault and non-support. Eventually, women were jailed at the facility for solicitation, prostitution, disorderly conduct, vagrancy and intoxication.