Timothy Thomas Fortune was a late-19th, early-20th century African-American journalist and civil rights activist. His white, two-story Victorian home is a national landmark. Some preservationists, however, fear that the owners, who have been unable to sell the building, are taking it off the market and thinking of demolishing it.
Fortune, founder of the New York Age, moved into the house in Red Bank, N.J., in 1901. According to the Asbury Park Press, Fortune did much of his editing work in that house and his more prominent visitors included Booker T. Washington.
“What precipitated the calls to action is that the house has been vandalized and it’s boarded up and taken off the market,” Peter Primavera, a historic preservation consultant, told the newspaper.
“I sympathize with the owners, they were caught in a bad real estate market,” he said. “We’re not adversarial with the owners; we’re trying to come up with a way to buy it. I’m trying to bring it to the attention of people with the resources to save it.”
Even though the house is on the National Register of Historic Places, the designation won’t save it from destruction if the owners want to get rid of it.
It has happened before.
On Aug. 17, 2002, an 1875 brick Victorian rowhouse in Washington, D.C., where Duke Ellington performed in cabarets during the 1920s was demolished. The city declared the townhouse unsafe, and it was razed three hours later, while preservationists were in court trying to save it. In addition, the D.C. house where Ellington was born in 1899 had also been torn down.
There is good news, however: the Trust for Historic Preservation announced in May that the Carter G. Woodson Home National Historic Site, in D.C.’s Shaw neighborhood, had been awarded $75,000 to rebuild the front and rear facades to stabilize the home for public access. It is Woodson who has been credited with creating Negro History Week, which became the precursor of what is now popularly known as Black History Month.
While black historic sites have faced some uphill battles trying to dodge the wrecking ball, there is encouragement that more of these sites are being recognized and efforts are being made to save them.
The Trust offers resources and links to organizations that work to save sites, like the Thomas Fortune House, which has a fan page on Facebook. The African American Heritage Preservation Foundation, which also is dedicated to preserving African- American history and historical sites, has a special interest in sites in the South and the mid-Atlantic.
Such organizations provide an opportunity for people to become interested and involved in saving historic sites before they reach the verge of demolition. History comes to life when it is more than words in a textbook and can actually be seen and touched.
