What does the future hold for the Tanner House? Historic preservation grad students have ideas.

Historic preservation graduate students at the University of Pennsylvania have suggested a number of ideas for future uses of the Henry O. Tanner House in North Philadelphia.

Last week, they presented their proposals at the end of a semester-long Preservation Studio workshop.

The childhood home of the artist Henry O. Tanner, who studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and later gained international acclaim after moving to Paris, has been deteriorating for years now. Preservationists are scrambling to try to save it.

The Friends of the Tanner House, a grassroots group, launched a fund-raising campaign to stabilize the house at 2908 W. Diamond St., after The Inquirer reported last year that the house, a National Historic Landmark, has suffered structural damage.

The fund-raising campaign is coordinated with the Preservation Alliance for Greater Philadelphia, which acts as the fiduciary agent.

The Friends group also connected with Randall Mason, a professor of historic preservation at Penn’s Weitzman School of Design to discuss ways to promote salvaging the house.

Nearly all of the students said they would first expand the historical significance of the house beyond the artist to include the extended Tanner family, including the Mossell and Alexander relatives.

They said future uses for the house should recognize the importance of the family, who across generations made significant contributions in medicine, law, and civil rights.

Mason said the eight students who presented on the Tanner House mainly have architectural backgrounds, but some also studied fine art, history, and theology before signing up for the class.

One proposal was to establish the Tanner House for African American Art and Culture that would include an artist-in-residence space with an art gallery on the first floor, and the living spaces for an artist on the upper floor. The artist would also give art lessons.

Another idea was to convert it into a day-care center on the first and second floors, that would serve the Strawberry Mansion neighborhood, with tenant housing on the third floor.

That proposal noted that because Tanner was inspired to become an artist when he walked to Fairmount Park and saw an artist painting at an easel, the day-care center could incorporate art and nature into the educational program for the children.

Another said the house would best serve the neighborhood by providing affordable housing.

Mason said the students went inside the house a couple of times and used drones to capture photos of the deteriorating roof.

Justin Spivey and a team from the engineering firm, Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates, better known as WJE, served as mentors and guides for the students.

The WJE team completed a stabilization report on what needs to be done to keep the house from deteriorating further.

The stabilization report said three major corrections must be prioritized:

While the house has been badly damaged by water that came in through the shattered roof, Spivey said, “I do think the structure can be salvaged.”

He said that when students visited the house, he guided them to avoid safety hazards.

“As a structural engineer,” Spivey said, “I understand how to be in a compromised structure and move around safely. I can guide students through the house, by telling them, ‘Step here, don’t go into the middle of that room, don’t stand underneath that unstable area of the roof.’“

He said WJE became involved with the project through a combination of paid consulting funded by the Center for the Preservation of Civil Rights Sites and engineers’ pro bono services, which included meeting with students, answering their questions, and attending the studio review.

“Our work was also made more cost-effective by [working with] two Penn historic preservation students who, separately from the studio project, helped measure the house and create floor-plan drawings,” he said.

Christopher Rogers, co-coordinator of Friends of the Tanner House, said he was impressed by the students’ ideas. But he said the group is also working with Strawberry Mansion community organizations to learn about community proposals as well.

For now, the house still belongs to private owners. Michael Thornton, a biology professor at Florida A&M University, said he wants to sell it to a nonprofit organization, which would make it eligible for major grants. But the house has a tangled title and he is making applications through the courts to be able to sell it.

Still, Rogers said, Friends of Tanner are seeking contractors to bid on the stabilization work.

» READ MORE: Once ‘the center of the Black intellectual community in Philadelphia,’ the Henry O. Tanner House could be demolished

The house also fits into Mason’s role as faculty director of Penn’s Center for the Preservation of Civil Rights Sites at the Weitzman School of Design.

Tanner’s father, Bishop Benjamin Tucker Tanner, of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, served as the editor of the Christian Recorder newspaper, which advocated for newly freed Black Americans.

“It’s such an important Black family in the history of Philadelphia, and the nation.”

Tanner’s sister, Dr. Halle Tanner Dillon Johnson, was the first woman to pass the Medical Boards in Alabama. Booker T. Washington, founder of what is now Tuskegee University, visited the Tanner House to persuade her father to allow her to move to the segregated South. She established a nursing school at Tuskegee Institute.

Tanner’s mother, Sara Elizabeth Miller Tanner, was one of 11 children placed on a wagon to escape slavery on the Underground Railroad to freedom in Pennsylvania.

Tanner’s grandniece, Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander, for whom the Penn Alexander School is named, was both a lawyer and the first Black person ― male or female — to earn a doctorate in economics in 1921.

And Judge Raymond Pace Alexander, Sadie Alexander’s husband, worked with his wife to file lawsuits challenging segregated schools and theaters, as early as 1924.

“It’s such an important Black family in the history of Philadelphia, and the nation,” Mason said. “We have to circle back to the fact that this is a National Historic Landmark.

“We have a responsibility, all of us, not just Black folks and not just folks in North Philadelphia, but all of us to help tell this story because it’s been forgotten and made invisible over the years.’”