Home to one of Tacoma’s first Black leaders, big plans await this recently sold property
The house isn’t much to look at, at least in its current state. White porch columns hint at its former grandeur, but the years have taken their toll. The paint is faded. A cockeyed cable TV satellite dish clings to the roof. Mismatched folding chairs provide a view of a yard partially surrounded by one of those laurel hedges people plant for privacy but soon come to regret.
Still, Cynthia Tucker said that purchasing the Hilltop property at 1219 S. 13th St. earlier this week filled her with so much joy and excitement that she can barely put it into words.
“You can’t really describe how good it feels,” Tucker said, fresh off of signing the papers. “We’re just so excited about it.”
Tucker is president of the Tacoma City Association of Colored Women’s Clubs, or CWC. For the last several years, she’s been one of many local people working to broker a deal allowing the nonprofit to purchase and restore the property, which was once owned by Nettie Asberry, one of Tacoma’s first and most prominent civil rights leaders.
For decades, Asberry — a Black woman with a doctorate in music who founded the first chapter of the NAACP west of Rockies in 1913 — taught music out of the large home, which she shared with her husband Henry up until his death. At the same time, as Historic Tacoma board member Marshall McClintock told The News Tribune last year, Asberry turned the residence into “a center for the African American community, particularly through the early half of the 20th Century,” hosting community events and touring Black speakers while helping to launch clubs like the Tacoma CWC from her living room.
The CWC’s recent purchase of the property — and the one next door — was made possible by roughly $900,000 included in last year’s state budget. The project was aided by the support of Gov. Jay Inslee and local lawmakers like T’wina Nobles and Jake Fey, as well as the advocacy of Historic Tacoma and the nonprofit Forterra, which lent its land-acquisition experience to the deal, serving as what director of community development Nicholas Carr described as a fiscal agent.
Prior to this week’s sale, both properties were owned by Keith Kepler, a program manager at Microsoft who purchased them as investment rentals in 2004. When he bought the Asberry home, Kepler said he had a limited understanding of its historical significance, but “it hadn’t really clicked.”
On Thursday, Kepler said he was first approached by Forterra and the Tacoma CWC about the possible sale of the property several years ago. He had long wanted to be part of an effort that would benefit Hilltop — including renting to low-income families — and quickly came to see the value of the proposition, he said.
“(The CWC) wanted it as a restoration project and just something that brought the heritage back, and I was happy with that,” Kepler said. “I always wanted to do something positive for the community, so this was perfect.”
Still glowing, Tucker said the Tacoma CWC plans to renovate and restore the storied Hilltop residence, eventually transforming it into a gathering space, library and a lasting monument to Black history in Tacoma.
The importance of Black organizations like the CWC owning pieces of the city’s African American history — and reclaiming them — can’t be understated, Tucker said.
“Nettie Asberry was one of our founders. She got us started. So to be able to have her home and to promote her legacy for the future generations is astonishing,” Tucker said. “For the last five years working on this project has been very draining, but it’s been worth every bit of it. We put a lot of work into pulling it all together and making it happen. And the energy we put into it was for a community.”
Carr said assisting the Tacoma CWC was a project that fit within Forterra’s evolving mission. Traditionally known for its environmental conservation efforts, Carr said expanding the nonprofit’s work to urban areas — much like the purchase and eventual redevelopment of the old Hilltop Rite Aid down the street — can be equally important.
“There is work to be done in our communities and towns — outside of simply conserving forests and fishing streams — and this fell into that,” Carr said. “(By helping to facilitate the CWC’s purchase of the historic Asberry home), we’re working with the local community in an urban area to protect and use land for the benefit of its citizens.”
With keys in hand, Tucker and Tacoma CWC board president Carrol Mitchell said the organization is eager to deliver on the Asberry home’s promise. In the coming months, Mitchell said that the nonprofit will be working with partners to ensure that the current tenants successfully relocate, including providing financial assistance, and that work to restore the home — which will require further fundraising and grant writing — will likely begin by mid-2022. On Tuesday, the Tacoma City Council officially granted the home landmark designation, adding it to the city’s Register of Historic Places.
Tucker can hardly wait to get started.
“I’m just ecstatic,” Tucker said. “This shows that anything is possible.”
