Rehabilitation & Preservation
Sometimes we have to step in and take on a project ourselves.
23 Franklin Street
For forty years, 23 Franklin Street was the home of former New London NAACP president Linwood Bland, Jr. It was also a Greek Revival house built by Edward Hempstead around 1845.
With funding from the Connecticut Housing Finance Authority's HTCC program, the City of New London, the State of Connecticut, private loans and our own financial reserves, we abated asbestos, replaced the wiring and heating system, replaced the roof, removed the exterior cedar shingles and repaired the original wood clapboard siding, revealed boarded up windows and a boxed in stairway, repaired the foundation, the plaster, the floors and even a four-inch sag.
Now this house will continue to grace the Hempstead Historic District, provide affordable homeownership for the next thirty years, and will be one of fifteen sites on the city's Black Heritage Trail.
Ichabod and Rose Pease
Gravestones
In 2019, we raised funds for the rehabilitation of the gravestones of Ichabod and Rose Pease. We raised over $1700 with a lecture by researchers Mary Lycan and Tom Schuch on Ichabod Pease, who was born into slavery and who opened a school for New London's Black children when he was eighty-one years old.
Ichabod and Rose Pease's gravestones in Cedar Grove Cemetery
David Bishop House Project, 49 Washington Street
late 1980s and early 1990s
The David Bishop House during rehabilitation.
The David Bishop House after rehabilitation.