The Lee–Fendall House Museum and Garden opened to the public the following year in 1974 just before the Nation’s Bicentennial, a time when general interest in historic house museums and historic preservation were at a high. As with most small museums, funding for operations, maintenance, and renovation were scarce. Frances Shively was the first director of the Museum and lived in the House without drawing a salary. Memberships, donations, small grants, and revenue gathered from tours, events, and a gift shop were insufficient to meet the Museum's needs. In 2015, a Fendall descendant left a modest endowment to the Trust with its proceeds offsetting some of the Museum's costs. The original focus on the connections with the Lee family has been "expanded to encompass the experiences of enslaved people in Alexandria, the experience of Alexandrians during the Union occupation, the development of medicine, and social change in the aftermath of the Civil War and early 20th Century."