Nashville’s Hubbard House awarded preservation grant

After being vacant for years, big plans for Nashville’s George W. Hubbard House are coming to fruition after the historic home was awarded a grant to preserve the work of African American architects.

The house, located on the orignal campus of the historically Black Meharry Medical College, will receive $100,000 for conserving Black modernism from the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund.

“We’ve been on this journey for 11 years, trying to get the Hubbard House up and running,” said Robert Churchwell Jr., a leader at Seay-Hubbard United Methodist Church, which owns the house. “This is the first phase out of a larger plan.”

The Hubbard House was designed and built by McKissack and McKissack, one of the oldest Black-owned architectural firms in the United States, in 1921 after Meharry alumni, students and faculty raised the funds to build the home. 

It was named for the first president of the college and is the only remaining building of the original campus. The school moved to North Nashville in the 1930s. 

The house served as the retirement home for George W. Hubbard until a former pastor of Seay-Hubbard, Reverend Julian Johnson, purchased the home from Meharry.

“The home still has furniture from when Hubbard lived in the home,” Churchwell said.

When Johnson retired, Seay-Hubbard purchased the home and converted it into a parsonage of the church until clergy no longer wanted to reside there. It was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973.

In 2015, nonprofit Friends of the Hubbard House was started to raise funds to restore the home as a resource for the South Nashville and Trimble Bottom area of Nashville. 

In partnership with Meharry Medical College, the home will be turned into a minor medical, dental and mental health facility. Patients will be seen by Meharry students under the watch of licensed physicians, free of charge, for any minor issues they may be experiencing. Patients can also obtain prescriptions from the facility. 

Medical and dental services will be rotated throughout the week, while the goal for mental health care services will be Monday-Friday.

Using the home as a medical facility is the biggest plan, however, the home will also be open to community functions such as meetings, for free, and tutorial assistance for Cameron Lee Academy and Napier Elementary School.

“Cameron Lee shared with us that they would like musical assistance because they do not have a musical program,” Churchwell said. “We have many members of the congregation who were musical teachers.”

Receiving the grant is a blessing, and a start, but there’s still a lot of work that needs to go into the Hubbard House.

“It’s a beginning to jump start the restoration of the house,” Churchwell said. “It is something that that community needs. It’s changing through gentrification, and there’s a lot of people there across the board that need these services.”

Thirty sites nationwide received grants this year through the Conserving Black Modernism program supported by the Getty Foundation.

A little over $1 million in fundraising is still needed to complete the restoration of the house as the grant only covers a small portion such as windows and masonry work.

If you would like to donate to Friends of the Hubbard House for the restoration, you can send a check to the Seay-Hubbard United Methodist Church, 1116 First Ave S. in Nashville in care of the President of the Hubbard House. 

Antonia Lopez contributed.