EDITORIALS
Showcase the Nash House
Longer hours, better interpretation needed for site to reach full potential
Updated: 07/21/08 6:37 AM
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- Tracy Penson of Chattanooga, Tenn., tries to get a look at the interior of the Nash House recently.
If people who took a long bus tour to Virginia’s Mount Vernon were as likely as not to find themselves straining to peer through the windows of George Washington’s locked-up mansion, rather than being able to tour the home of The Indispensable American, it would be a national scandal.
But when people who travel a long way to see, among other things, the inside of Buffalo’s Nash House find themselves on the outside looking in, well, that’s just Buffalo.
And that’s just not acceptable. Or, in a city that has so much of historic value to offer visitors, not necessary.
The home of the Rev. J. Edward Nash Sr., a longtime leader in Buffalo’s African-American community until his death in 1957, has been restored by the nonprofit Michigan Street Historic Preservation Corp. It is a landmark rememberance of the life of the leader of the community’s NAACP and Urban League chapters and the many changes he saw and was part of.
As part of a culturally important neighborhood that includes Nash’s Michigan Street Baptist Church and the nearby Colored Musicians Club, the house is a desired stop for tourists interested in a local heritage that goes all the way back to the days of the Underground Railroad.
Efforts to support the house and preserve its promise for both cultural and economic reasons include the state’s creation of the Michigan Street African American Heritage Corridor Commission, a $1 million state grant and listing the house on the National Register of Historic Places.
Sadly, though, the Nash House is open only 10 hours a week, divided between Thursdays and Saturdays. Other hours for special tours are possible, operators say, but have proven difficult to arrange. Historically minded tour groups have found themselves standing outside, looking at weeds and peeling paint, before moving along.
There’s no sign identifying the structure, much less listing visiting hours or contact information. (All that information is available on the landmark’s fairly impressive Web site — www.nashhousemuseum.org — along with a video snippet, audio clips and many photographs. But it’s not the same as being there.) The efforts by the Nash family, the preservation organization and Buffalo State College that have gone into building up the neighborhood will fall woefully short without a more aggressive management.
The Nash House may never be in the same league of historic and tourism significance as Washington’s Mount Vernon. But Mount Vernon features slave quarters, while the Nash House is part of a link to a Buffalo history that includes the Underground Railroad and freedom. People should be able to see it.
