by Todd Jackson
Under a blazing sun, children from Roanoke’s West End Center splashed in the water with delight. They’d been waiting on two summers without a pool at Washington Park – and years of discussion about the need for a new facility.
“It is truly a great day to celebrate the completion of one of Roanoke’s most highly anticipated projects,” City Manager Valmarie Turner said of the $3.5-million project during a ribbon cutting Friday, June 6. “The new Washington Park pool is more than just a recreation upgrade. It’s a smart community investment in the quality of life.”
Just a few yards from the pool sat another debated potential investment: a house where the park’s caretaker lived during Jim Crow segregation. New fencing surrounded the dilapidated cottage, its crumbling roof exposed to the weather. The dichotomy was impossible to miss: A blighted building beside a brand new, state-of-the-art pool.
The cottage was headed toward demolition. But then the politics around it changed as a grassroots effort to save the almost 200-year-old cottage accelerated, grounded in preservation of Black history. And the determination behind that effort was helped by historic renovation of another dilapidated house in another city park a few miles away, on Brambleton Avenue.
At Fishburn Park, in the predominantly white Grandin Court neighborhood, part of the cottage has new siding approved for historic restoration. Insulation has been blown into the top floor. A cabin hundreds of years old is coming back to its old self.
During a recent tour of the cottage, owners Keri and Justin vanBlaricom said they hope their coffee shop, Fishburn Perk, will open by the end of the year.
The vanBlaricoms have been following the Washington Park situation and they say they hope a way can be found to save the cottage there. But they say doing any such project comes with challenges: What will be done with a preserved structure once it’s renovated? If the city keeps ownership of the Washington Park cottage, will it have the funding to do what is necessary?
“Restoring something and then letting it deteriorate again, that’s just throwing money down the drain,” Justin vanBlaricom said.
Cathy Carter, president of advocacy group Friends of Washington Park, said it’s not lost on her that the city sold the Fishburn Park cottage and land for $10 in a predominantly white part of the city.
“You have to have park equity,” she said.
There is no specific proposal at this point for the city to sell the Washington Park cottage, which enslaved laborers helped build in 1837, according to research by the Christiansburg Institute. The institute, a nonprofit with a mission of responsible stewardship of African American history and culture in Southwest Virginia, has filed for a grant on behalf of the Friends group.
The group’s push is weighted heavily in a desire to save the structure because of what it means to Black history, not necessarily how much money a potential use could generate. The cottage stands in the first city park for Black residents off Orange Avenue, soon to celebrate its 102nd anniversary.
Carter and other Friends group members say the Fishburn Park cottage preservation created energy for them to push for the same to happen in Washington Park.
A new majority on Roanoke City Council, all of whom took office this year, has been more amenable to finding a way to save the cottage.
Meanwhile, there are historical issues that people care about that can be reduced to the way a shingle is laid on an older home in certain sections of the city, he said.
“We care about the history of everything else,” he said, in reference to what’s not happened with the Washington Park cottage.
McGuire said it will be a “gift to the city” if the cottage can be restored. He said Friends of Washington Park should be credited with doing “a ton of outreach.”
Cobb, on behalf of the city council, signed a May 22 letter of support for the $800,000 grant request that’s been made by the Christiansburg Institute. The letter was sent to the Virginia Department of Historic Resources, which manages the Black, Indigenous and People of Color Historic Preservation Fund (BIPOC).
“Roanoke is deeply committed to preserving the rich histories of our Black and Indigenous communities and this project represents a critical step in honoring that history,” the letter reads.
It’s the full council’s strongest public action yet on the matter, and its letter comes after a similar one from Turner, the city manager, in support of the BIPOC grant.
McGuire said he’s hoping the grant funding for the cottage renovation is secured.
“Things will start falling into place” if that happens, McGuire said he believes.
What if it doesn’t come through? McGuire said that there will likely be a “major pause and reassess.”
This year, there are 58 applications requesting about $28 million for an award amount this round of $2.5 million, Caitlin Sylvester, grant coordinator for the state Historic Resources Department, wrote in an email. The department will be making award announcements in early fall and running another round of the program next spring, she wrote.
Christiansburg Institute’s director, Chris Sanchez, said his group’s involvement with the effort creates a synergy that makes historical sense. Booker T. Washington – the Roanoke Park’s namesake – was an advisor at the Christiansburg Institute.
Sanchez told the council during the May meeting that he believes an $800,000 grant award will pay for an inside-and-out restoration of the two-story structure, which is a little over 900 square feet. That would bring it to a condition so it would be ready for additional redevelopment for whatever use is chosen.
The cottage’s potential use remains the crux of debate, including questions about why that has yet to be determined. Garland said he believes it makes perfect sense for a restored cottage to be incorporated as a use with the new pool.
Phazhon Nash, the city councilman, said he has a similar idea. He said at its smaller size, the cottage can fit about 30 people comfortably, based on his research. He said it could be used in a variety of ways related to the pool. And he said its walls could become a niche museum to tell the story of the park, which could be a bridge from a challenging history – including the park being built on the site of a former landfill – to a brighter future.
