Preservationists are fighting to prevent the demolition of the childhood home of American painter Henry Ossawa Tanner, one of the first black artists to achieve international acclaim in the early 20th century.
Tanner resided at 2908 West Diamond Street in Philadelphia as a teenager. Tanner moved to Paris to work about the time he turned 30. Sometime in the 20th century, Tanner’s relatives sold the house, and it later fell into disrepair.
In 1976, the home received national landmark status, and now, a Black preservationist organization is working to raise the money necessary to maintain the historic row house.
Nearly $30,000 has already been raised for the restoration of the house by the Friends of the Henry O. Tanner House, an organization organized by a local historian, and Deborah Gray, president of the Society to Preserve Philadelphia African American Assets.
The building was described as an “unsafe construction” in a recent engineer’s study, according to the group’s website. The property needs to be repaired for an extra $300,000 to prevent it from being destroyed; the organization hopes to raise the remaining money by June 2023.
The Philadelphia Museum of Art and the White House have permanent collections of Tanner’s works. Tanner was a student at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and is best known for his landscapes and interior scenes.
The structure, which the preservationist group referred to as a hub of “important Black Philadelphia legacies,” also housed some of Tanner’s relatives. His niece, Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander, was a civil rights fighter with graduate degrees in economics and law, and his sister, Halle Tanner Dillon Johnson, was Alabama’s first certified physician.