Preservationists are moving to save the childhood home of American painter Henry Ossawa Tanner, one of the first Black American artists to gain international recognition during the early 20th century, from being destroyed.
As a teenager, Tanner lived at 2908 West Diamond Street in Philadelphia. Around when he turned 30, Tanner left the city to work in Paris. The house transferred ownership from Tanner’s relatives sometime in the 20th century, and later fell into disrepair.
The house was awarded National Landmark Status in 1976, and a Black preservationist group is now campaigning to raise the funds needed to keep the historic rowhouse intact.
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The Friends of the Henry O. Tanner House, led by local historian and Deborah Gray, president of the Society to Preserve Philadelphia African American Assets, has so far raised nearly $30,000 for the restoration of the home.
According to the group’s website, a recent engineer’s report deemed the building an “unsafe structure.” An additional $300,000 is needed for repairs on the property to keep it from being destroyed; the group aims to raise the remaining funds by June 2023.
Works by Tanner, who attended the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts as a student and became known for his landscapes and interior scenes, are in the permanent collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the White House.
Some of Tanner’s relatives also lived in the building, which the preservationist group described as a nexus of “significant Black Philadelphia legacies.” His sister, Halle Tanner Dillon Johnson, was Alabama’s first licensed physician; his niece, Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander, was a civil rights activist who earned advanced degrees in economics and law.