Dox Thrash, a prolific African American printmaker historic homeand legacy are threatened. Our project goals to reuse his home to resetablish art back into the community.
Leader
Alli Davis
Location
2340 Cecil B. Moore Ave Philadelphia , PA 10121
Historic Sharswood was an African American hub of arts, theater, and activism that thrived from strong economic activity situated along the main corridors of Ridge and Columbia Avenue (now Cecil B. Moore Ave). This activity was supported by the influx of new residents settling in the area from Southern states during the Great Migration. Printmaker Dox Thrash and painter Henry Owassa Tanner settled in the community to live and work. Pearl Bailey, Duke Ellington, and the Nichols Brothers were among the many entertainers that played the Pearl Theater and socialized among themselves at the private Pyramid Club, founded by Thrash and others in the 1930s. During the 1950’s African American social justice movements, activists such as Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., Cecil B Moore, and Leon Sullivan organized, marched, lived, delivered speeches, and led rallies in the fight for local injustices such as the desegregation of private school Girard College. The Sharswood neighborhood is still heavily characterized by these recent historic influences and is dotted with murals, long-term residents, and historic resources that memorialize this period.
Now, in 2020 The Thrash home is among many vacant storfronts along the commerical coridor of the historically black nieghborhood. Dox Thrash, whose work honored everyday moments in African American life through printmaking became part of well-known institutional collections, like the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the African American Museum. This history is tied to this house in a tangible way and its development creates a new space where the community can cotinue his legacy.
His home is poised to become artistic and economic anchor for the Cecil B. Moore/ Ridge Ave business corridor. The project is paired with visionary, community activists and artists that support local entrepreneurship. The Dox Thrash House futures project is posied to become a public cultural amenity that invigorates the block with new activity and sets a standard for future equitable development in Sharswood.
We need your help to bring the historic property out of the private sector and make that future a reality!
This project takes on the design justice practice platform developed to establish a socially and environmentally just code of ethics for operating as designers of the built environment. This initiative is black lead and acknowledges our role and responsibility in creating spaces of racial, cultural, and class equity. The project will mitigate the years of disinvestment into this community by the city- and revive the cultural life in this section fo the city. The goals are to save the Dox Thrash House and secure its economic future along the Cecil B. Moore business corridor, as well as secure and sustain current residents of the Sharswood neighborhood to remain in their homes and community by preserving their lived past and bringing in new black businesses that reflect their values and chosen needs.
Working together with our partners we would acquire the resources needed to lead an equitable development process to achieve these goals. As a group, we bring extended architectural resources, preservation best practices, conservation/docu-mentation expertise, a network of other professional and institutional resources along with considerable community buy-in with the capacity to build local to national financial support and awareness through our combined activism, and have created extended platforms to discuss and exchange ideas that this project embodies.
