[1] A strong community partner with a growing national reputation, the Workhouse hosts celebrations, offers space for special events, and showcases Fairfax County's commitment to the arts.

[2] Artists rent studio space, actors perform on the stage, students of all ages take classes from dance to blacksmithing[3] on an arcaded campus built on the same Jeffersonian plan of linked pavilions as found on the main grounds of the University of Virginia.

[6] The most recent addition is the Lucy Burns Museum,[7] which tells the 91-year history of the District of Columbia's Correctional Facility and honors the suffragists who were imprisoned there in 1917.

Among the findings was the conclusion that instead of sitting in idleness, prisoners could be taught a trade, bettering their future opportunities as they benefited local communities.

The Workhouse was designed to rehabilitate and reform prisoners through fresh air, good food, honest work, and fair treatment.

The first prisoners arrived in 1910 and in keeping with the movement in penal reform, they were put to work – first building wooden structures from timber on the property and then creating a brick kiln.

In the hopes that it could be self-sustaining, the Workhouse came to include cultivated fields, pasture lands, an orchard and cannery, a poultry farm, a hog ranch, a slaughterhouse, a dairy, a blacksmith shop, a sawmill to process the property's timber, and barns for feed, hay, and storage.