It has recently come to my attention that the City has considered demolishing the historic Caretaker’s House on the grounds of the Booker T. Washington Park in Roanoke. I am writing to urge you to reconsider. Although I am a newcomer to this beautiful city, as an oral historian who has written two books on local African American history, I value its importance and significance in our American story.
The house, which dates from circa 1837, and built by the enslaved workers of Jeremiah Whitten who owned the property at the time, is one of the oldest surviving structures in the city and is the oldest surviving example of an antebellum brick hall-parlor house in the Roanoke Valley. But beyond its architectural importance is its deep and profound historical significance.
The land Washington Park is located on was originally associated with a mill established by one of the earliest settlers, Mark Evans, in the mid to late-1700s. It was also the site of Roanoke’s first dairy operated by Peyton Terry and Charles T. Lukens in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
The Lukens family sold the land to the City of Roanoke in 1922, and it became the first public park for the Black community during the Jim Crow era of segregation. For more than sixty years, the house was home to several Black families who took care of the park, which was the only gathering place for African Americans throughout Southwest Virginia, which included major attractions such as Dreamland and the Royal Gardens. Importantly, the house and park served as a focus of a civil rights campaign in the 1950s led by Rev. R.R. Wilkinson.
The Caretaker’s House stands as one of the only structures that is emblematic of the scope of the region’s complex history: built before the Civil War as part of early White settlement and becoming a central place for the Black community before, during, and after the Civil Rights Movement.
It is especially difficult to consider the demolition of the Caretaker’s House because of Roanoke’s history of destroying important parts of the Black community in the past, such as Tank Town and Henry Street, thriving business districts, torn down from the 1955 to the mid-1970s during urban renewal. Henry Street is now memorialized with a marker and is on the National Register of Historic Places. I, for one, would hate to see another important African American structure razed only to be remembered with a marker.
I understand that a preliminary application for historic status for the Washington Park Caretaker’s House has been filed in 2024 with the Virginia Department of Historic Resources after careful research and evaluation by a team of architectural historians.
The historians, although noting the poor condition of the structure, believe the building can be saved and envision it taking its place once again as a monument to its importance in Roanoke’s history and a gathering place for the community at large.
There is also a groundswell of support from groups such as the Friends of Washington Park, the Roanoke Valley Preservation Board, and others. I add my name to others who are urging you to save the Caretaker’s House, an important part of the Roanoke Valley’s history and could become part of its future.
