Protect this House
The Banneker School restoration project is the type of thing Parkville was made for: Historic preservation in a town that prides itself on its romantic past. Add to that a sense of moral conviction – the Benjamin Banneker School offers a glimpse into the days of slavery and segregation like few other places in the Kansas City metropolitan area can. It also showcases Parkville’s community spirit: that 1,000,000 penny drive really drummed up a lot of interest and volunteers for the project have held the torch on this project for decades now.
But sometimes a project in Parkville can suffer from paralysis by over analysis. I’m beginning to wonder if the Banneker School restoration project isn’t one such project.
The project has come far, albeit in slow, methodical steps, over the years. The property was saved from the wrecking ball, the property was acquired by historians, it’s been placed on the historic register and now, a committee filled with bright, talented people is in place. Personally, I like the direction the overall project is going in (though, like Jim Brooks says in Lauren Moore’s report on page one I’d like to see stronger and larger-scale fundraising efforts) but I don’t like the proposed end result – namely some sort of state-of-the art museum attraction that comes with an estimated pricetag of $400,000.
Look at the house on page one and then flip to the advertisement on our back page. (Editor’s note: the back page is the National Golf Club’s advertisement which lists homes starting in the $300,000 range.)
Now, would you spend $400,000 on an 18x34, crumbling (yet historic) house or would you buy the mansion at the National? Does the restoration include a jacuzzi and bev-o-matic stocked with Kristal and Beluga Caviar? Are we building Banneker for Jay-Z and Beyonce or for the students? The museum is supposed to offer visitors a glimpse into the turn of the century black student’s experience. That experience did not come with a computerized interactive experience and air conditioning (or blinged out rappers and diva songstresses). In fact, it might be more cost effective to just put Banneker School, as is, inside an air-conditioned $400,000 house. Robin Leach can be on hand for the ribbon cutting.
I think we need to scale back on the museum plan and get a little realistic here. 18th and Vine, the Gem Theatre and the Negro League Hall of Fame doesn’t draw a lot of visitors – it’s unlikely a foundation is going to come along and float this operation for very long in today’s environment. The idea of sinking all of that money into Banneker and keeping it secure, insured, advertised and staffed regularly seems farfetched. I think instead of Disneyfying the site, we should restore the building into a close facsimile of what an actual one-room schoolhouse of it’s size looked like back in the day and market it to school systems around the region to consider for a class trip. This would lower the cost of restoration, slash the operations budget (in this scenario I would imagine a volunteer staff of curators that served on an as needed basis), eliminate the need for air conditioning and probably attract more visitors in the long run – at least it’s a sustainable model…there will always be school kids, you know. And it would not only benefit Banneker but Parkville in general: as any parent can attest, a child that visits another town on a class trip will go home that night and tell them they need to visit, too.
Anyway, that’s my 25 cents on the matter. The Luminary stands ready to help either way (with or without champagne). We just need to get this project finished. It’s time.
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