Inside a crumbling house in need of restoration lie generations' worth of stories etched into the walls. They belong to famous musicians, athletes, civil rights leaders — and the family who started it all.
This is the historic Jackson House in Tampa, which was built in 1901. The property at 851 E. Zack St. was a boarding house where African Americans would stay during the segregation era. The house closed in 1989 and has been designated as a historical landmark. Over the years, it has fallen into disrepair.
But the community is determined to keep its history and the building alive for years to come.
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The Jackson House Foundation announced plans earlier this year to restore and open the house as a Black history museum and educational center. It's holding a fundraiser event on June 18 that includes an original musical called "Live at the Jackson House." The proceeds go toward the restoration.
The initial goal was for the project to be done within the next two years.
But the lead architect, Jerel McCants, told “Florida Matters Live & Local” this week it’ll likely be longer than that. He estimates about three years and maybe even a year and a half on top of that. There's a lot of work to be done.
Obstacles in rebuilding a landmark
“Once the contractor comes on board, we have to phase the project and do a phased deconstruction,” McCants said. “We can’t tear down all the walls. We have to tear down parts of the wall, then we have to categorize the materials and try to repurpose them.”
They also have to abide by local building codes, as the property was built over 120 years ago.
“We have to make it structurally sound to withstand our climatic events and adhere to the current building codes that we have in place, which is going to cause some more structural reinforcement around the foundations,” McCants said.
He said the house hasn’t had any major repairs since it was originally constructed. It had several additions and modifications that have been added onto it, though.
“The family had did their best to keep it up, and it is actually a testament to the structure that it is still standing, knowing that Florida and Tampa has weather events and severe storms that it has still been able to withstand that. There was a partial collapse about a year and a half ago,” McCants said. “And there’s been an endoskeleton that we call it an interior cross-bracing framing that was put in about 15 years ago. That has actually helped stabilize the house.”
McCants said he was able to tour the house before the cross bracing around 2012 and met one of the descendants of the Jackson family: Willie Robinson.
Behind the history of the Jackson House
Robinson told him there are fingerprints etched into the plaster walls that were molded and had probably been there for 80 years, he recalled.
“When it’s tactile, you can touch it and feel it, experience it — it forms a stronger connection,” McCants said. “And it wasn’t just about the celebrities that were there. There were kids living there. It was a small family."
This was a two-story, 24-room boarding house and is the only remaining building from Tampa’s oldest Black neighborhood, the Scrub. It hosted names like Ella Fitzgerald, Nat "King" Cole, Cab Calloway and so many more.
In a 2014 oral history interview from the Hillsborough County Public Library, Robinson said his mother was one of four daughters and two sons who lived in the house. It was close to the train station and so his grandparents first accommodated visitors with pallets on their porch as they waited for their train overnight. This is because African Americans at the time had nowhere else they could stay. As the family recognized the need in the community, they expanded the three-bedroom cottage into a boarding house.
Robinson added that when his mother tried to tell him the history when he was very young, he initially did not "want to take it in." But he came to understand the value of it and wanted to encourage young people to dig into their roots.
"Learn your history because the greatest history in the world is your history," Robinson said. "Yes, we know about Dr. Martin Luther King and Thurgood Marshall and all those people in the United States. But your history is important. Learn the bad, the good and the ugly about your history because that history will always follow you throughout your life."
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McCants said it’s powerful when you walk through the building or other historical buildings and see how it is “more than just spaces and walls.”
“It talks about all that is experienced when you walk through a space, and it begins to want to be able to express its story to you so you feel you resonate with it,” he said.
One of his "passion projects"
And every design has a dialogue.
McCants has even written a book called “Architecture of Segregation: The Hierarchy of Spaces and Places,” which gives insight into how “legal frameworks influenced architectural design and urban planning.” It navigates the connection on how architecture has “shaped and reflected racial, ethnic and social segregation throughout history.”
And since learning from Robinson when he first moved to Tampa, McCants has been interested in preserving the house’s history. He said he is just part of the Jackson House Foundation movement to keep the building alive.
“We can’t just tear it down and rebuild it because it has grant funding from the city, state, and the state governs the local National Register of Historic Places, so all that has to be in strict oversight, so we can’t just tear down all the walls and rebuild it,” he said. “That would be very simple, because it’s not that big of a structure, but going in and having to abide by all the requirements where we have to satisfy the grant sources in order to maintain the historic designation is going to be challenging.”
He added the reason why the building was given historic grants is because of the history of the people who lived there — not necessarily the “architectural vernacular character style or period that it was built in.”
He said that’s something they have to maintain when building it. And as it transforms into a museum, that concept will be displayed with set designs and period rooms for visitors to walk through those spaces and see how people lived and some of the celebrities who graced the building.
But although McCants feels the weight of the responsibility, this remains one of his “passion projects.”
Said McCants: “This is something you have to be vested into, understanding that it's not going to be realized in a tangible type of response or gift, so there's something you're giving back to the community.”
You can learn about the Jackson House Foundation here.
This story was compiled from an interview by Matthew Peddie for "Florida Matters Live & Local." You can listen to the full episode here.
