{"id":395511,"date":"2026-09-10T04:45:02","date_gmt":"2026-09-10T04:45:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/395511\/"},"modified":"2026-09-10T04:45:02","modified_gmt":"2026-09-10T04:45:02","slug":"tampas-historic-jackson-house-suffers-partial-collapse-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/395511\/","title":{"rendered":"Tampa\u2019s historic Jackson House suffers partial collapse \u2014 again"},"content":{"rendered":"

Decades ago, the historic Black boarding house welcomed the likes of Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald and James Brown.<\/p>\n

Today, it’s crumbling.<\/p>\n

A portion of downtown Tampa’s Jackson House buckled in recent days, a year after another partial collapse triggered emergency repairs<\/a>. The setback comes as the foundation that owns the building works to restore it by 2028<\/a>, and weeks after city officials approved $1 million for the effort.<\/p>\n

Built in the early 1900s, the 24-room boarding house at 851 E. Zack St. played host to decades of fame in an era when Black travelers had few places to stay in segregated Tampa. Ray Charles, Cab Calloway and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. visited.<\/p>\n

The house closed to the public in 1989 and has since deteriorated<\/a>, with cracks climbing across the chipped walls and splintered beams dangling from open window frames. A wall gave way recent days, leaving a portion of the second floor exposed.<\/p>\n

The Jackson House Foundation in February said it hopes to restore and reopen the house as a museum and educational center by 2028. The foundation last September selected the Tampa-based architecture firm<\/a> Jerel McCants Architecture, Inc. to lead the project.<\/p>\n

Carolyn Collins, the foundation’s chairperson, said that month that the organization has secured millions of dollars in city, county, state and federal funding for the effort. The Vinik Family Foundation also committed $1 million<\/a> in 2019 and has spent more than $500,000 stabilizing the property.<\/p>\n

Collins did not immediately respond to a phone call seeking comment Wednesday.<\/p>\n

The Tampa City Council, sitting as the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency board, last month approved $1 million for the restoration effort. But several council members had reservations, and the money came with a condition: The foundation would come back before the board on Thursday with a progress report.<\/p>\n

Council member Alan Clendenin said he was frustrated by the slow pace of the restoration, which began years ago. He supports the project, he said, but needs to ensure the city’s money is spent effectively. Clendenin and council member Charlie Miranda voted against the $1 million grant.<\/p>\n

Council member Bill Carlson said he lacked confidence in the foundation to complete the restoration, but approved the grant because he wanted to move swiftly.<\/p>\n

“If the city controlled this building, we would’ve restored it by now,” he said, noting that the city has previously offered to purchase the building from the foundation. “More than any time in the last 20 years, the Jackson House is about to fall down. We’ve got to move really fast.”<\/p>\n

“For someone to make a statement that we’re not doing what we’re supposed to do \u2026 I think that’s unfair,” replied Angela Scott, vice chairperson of the foundation.<\/p>\n

Collins agreed.<\/p>\n

“We are trying to jump through every hoop that we’ve been given, and it looks like every time we achieve one, we get another one,” she said. “But we’re not stopping. We’re going to rebuild the Jackson House.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Decades ago, the historic Black boarding house welcomed the likes of Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald and James Brown.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":395512,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[82225,82224,6184,157747,82223,135,610,137,136],"class_list":["post-395511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-billie-holiday","tag-carolyn-collins","tag-downtown-tampa","tag-ella-fitzgerald","tag-jackson-house","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-city-council","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=395511"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395511\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/395512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=395511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=395511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=395511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}