By R. Stephanie Bruno, Uptown Messenger | November 22, 2021

Graffiti is scrawled across the side of the Central City shotgun that was once the home of jazz legend Buddy Bolden, and siding that received a fresh coat of paint a few years ago has begun falling off. In front of the house at 2309-11 First Street, near Simon Bolivar Avenue, trash has been piling up around the abandoned remains of past roadwork.

Like many plans, those for the home of the musical innovator have been frozen in time for the past two years as Covid-19 disrupted every aspect of life here and abroad. But now that the coronavirus numbers are declining and people are starting to awaken from their forced slumber, questions have arisen about what exactly is going on in the 2300 block of First Street and when might work may be proceeding with the rehabilitation of Bolden’s former residence at 2309 First St.

No apparent progress has been made since the house appeared on the Louisiana Landmarks Society‘s list of New Orleans Nine Most Endangered Sites for the second time in November 2020.

The society said that, despite celebrated restoration plans, the building owned by the Greater St. Stephens Full Gospel Missionary Baptist Church remains at severe risk. “The building remains vacant, and an adjacent building also owned by the church burned in April. Bolden’s former home continues to languish.”

A cornet player born in 1877, Charles Joseph “Buddy” Bolden was not merely a jazz musician: many scholars say he single-handedly originated what we know as jazz today.

“He synthesized the syncopation of ragtime with the improvisation of the blues and made it into dance music. He made something so unique that he was recognized as the king of the genre,” said John McCusker, a jazz historian and tour guide. “If New Orleans is known as the cradle of jazz, then the Bolden house is the crib.”

McCusker said that he and local preservationists Annie Avery and Jack Stewart discovered that 2309 First was Bolden’s residence almost 20 years ago when they were researching the former homes of jazz greats for the Preservation Resource Center’s Jazz Houses plaque program.

Many early jazz musicians, like Bolden, never owned a home and still more moved frequently, so establishing credible addresses for them was not easy. But Bolden was shown living at 2309 First Street (one half of a shotgun double) in the 1900 city directory and in the 1900 census, where he is shown to be a plasterer. By 1902, the directory listed his profession as “musician.”

He was living in the First Street home with his mother in 1906, when he was sent to the state mental hospital in Jackson at the age of 29. Stories vary about what finally ended Bolden’s astonishing musical career and led to his institutionalization. One report states he hit his mother over the head because he thought she was trying to poison him when she was trying to administer medicine.

Such delusions and other factors led to his diagnosis of schizophrenia, considered untreatable at the time. Bolden died in the mental institution in 1931.

In 2008, the Greater St. Stephens Full Gospel Missionary Baptist Church bought both the Bolden house and the identical shotgun next door at 2305-07 First Street. Both structures were occupied by tenants at the time, but after they moved out, the houses remained vacant for a decade.

Without a specific plan for their use, the properties deteriorated to the extent that the city began fining the church, led by Bishop Paul Morton and the Rev. Debra Morton. As momentum grew for saving the property and rehabbing it, PJ Morton — the son of the church’s pastors and a New Orleans-born Grammy award winner — became involved.

“PJ wants to preserve the building and has a plan for it and the neighboring house,” said Brandin Campbell, PJ Morton’s spokesperson. “It’s a passion project for him.”

The very first step of the Buddy’s House Foundation, the nonprofit that PJ Morton founded, was to get a small grant to board up, secure and paint the buildings. Lean-to laundry rooms at the back of each building were removed due to structural and safety concerns.

In the May 2019 issue of Preservation in Print, the headline read “PJ Morton to Restore the Former Home of Buddy Bolden, the Father of Jazz.” Susan Langenhennig, the PRC’s marketing director and magazine editor, wrote about Morton’s plan to restore “the humble shotgun home into a small museum dedicated to Bolden’s life and the influence of his music.” The house next door, she wrote, is slated to become “a recording studio and workshop space where young musicians can learn the business side of the industry.”