Buy and preserve, for posterity

As a young girl in Portland, Oregon, Renée Watson immersed herself in the words of Langston Hughes, discovering that his poems about black identity mirrored experiences in her own life.

Since moving to Harlem in New York City more than a decade ago, she has often walked by his old home — a three-storey brownstone on East 127th Street with cast-iron railings and overgrown ivy. The author spent his final 20 years, and wrote some of the most notable literary works of the Harlem Renaissance, in this house. It was designated a historic landmark in 1981. Yet in recent years, the property has remained empty.

A performance space opened in 2007, but closed when the tenants were evicted about a year later. In 2010, the current owner listed the house for one million dollars, but found no buyers. With her neighbourhood experiencing rapid gentrification, Renée, 38, an author and poet, felt that too many crucial landmarks of the Harlem Renaissance, like Langston’s home, were disappearing or going unnoticed. “It feels like, whether it’s intentional or not, our stories are being erased,” Renée said. So, after a year’s worth of planning, she began to preserve the legacy of the house herself.

She began a non-profit organisation, persuaded the owner to let her lease and renovate the brownstone, and started raising the money necessary to do so. If she can successfully open Langston’s home and maintain it as a public space, it would be a notable feat, especially in New York City, some preservationists say. “That’s a pretty remarkable mission-driven desire to preserve a place,” said Seri Worden, senior field officer for the National Trust for Historic Preservation. “I do think it’s rare, and it sounds like it’s working.”

With rents and mortgage costs soaring in the city, a small preservation group or non-profit group like Renée’s must often confront almost insurmountable financial obstacles to buy, preserve and maintain a property. “It’s one of the greatest challenges facing historic preservation today,” said David Ehrich, a former banker who has led many efforts to preserve the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village. “The cost of historic preservation is almost out of reach.”

Renée envisions using Langston’s home as a gathering space for young artists, tied to a non-profit she is starting for emerging writers. In June, the homeowner agreed to lease and eventually sell the brownstone to Renée’s organisation as long as its members could raise the
money.

Turn to the masses

Renée took to crowdfunding and raised more than $87,000, which she says is enough to cover the first six months of rent and renovation costs. She would not say how much the owner was asking for an eventual sale. Similar homes nearby have sold in the past several months for about two million dollars. Several famous New York City homes have been converted into museums — such as the Louis Armstrong House Museum in Queens — but many were sold or donated to the city. Other efforts have failed or stalled because of a lack of funding, resources or cooperation from the building’s owner.

Some historical preservation advocates, like Barbaralee Diamonstein-Spielvogel, chairwoman of the New York State Council on the Arts, emphasise the importance of a home owner’s right to keep a home private, even if it is a historic landmark. Moreover, many existing house museums across the country have struggled to maintain budgets and build attendances. A house museum, Barbaralee argues, might not be the most effective way to teach the public about a historic figure.“I care more about who did what in that building,” she said. “I care more about his ideas than his furniture.”

Renée’s efforts are still a gamble. Like any non-profit, her collective will need to continue fundraising to sustain the home, she said. They also hope to bring in additional revenue by renting out rooms to artists and authors for events and book launches. What makes Renée’s approach unique, Seri said, is the fact that she does not simply plan to make it a house museum, but rather is creating a space for educational and creative programmes. “House museums are really challenging,” Seri said. “We do have to think bigger about some of our historic sites.

“In Queens, Bob Singleton, executive director of the Greater Astoria Historical Society, has tried for years to raise money to buy the Steinway Mansion, an elaborate Italianate villa once owned by the Steinway family, of the piano company.When the house went on the market in 2011 for the first time in decades, he formed a group called Friends of Steinway Mansion, but they failed to raise enough money. In 2014, the mansion and the surrounding lots were sold to its current owners, who bought the property as an investment. Warehouses and storage units have been built on the nearby land, but the mansion has remained vacant. Sal Lucchese, one of the property owners, said he would “absolutely entertain” an offer to turn the mansion into a public space, but so far, Singleton’s group and others have not had the means to do so.

Beyond the financial costs, Singleton said the zoning and renovating logistics involved with converting the mansion into a community center required support from local elected officials, which he did not have.“You need every component in the community on board for this,” Singleton said. “Unless you have that, everything else is moot.”

(Susan Beachy contributed research)