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New Orleans home of jazz's founding father is rotting away

Church that owns property says it needs to find money and finish other projects first

NEW ORLEANS -- Dozens of tourists stepped off a bus one recent morning, but they weren’t stopped to see one of the city’s famous sights.

Tour guide John McCusker gathered the visitors around a boarded up shotgun double in Central City and began his history lesson.

“We’re at 2309 1st St., and this is where Buddy Bolden lived most of the time he was an active musician in New Orleans.” The visitors, most who came from the United Kingdom, listened before they began to take pictures on the front steps where, McCusker noted, Bolden used to sit and blow on his cornet.

Lore is that he was so loud he had to sit outside instead of practicing inside, and people would come from blocks away to hear him.

The home might be unassuming and Bolden not a common name, but the mysterious musician about whom little is known is widely credited as a founding father of the music that put the city on the map. And there are concerns that the home could decay beyond repair.

Charles “Buddy” Bolden was born in 1877. The man that fans would later call “King” Bolden moved into the shotgun double when he was 10. For as popular as he was during his prime, his life came to a sad end.

“Bolden, always described as a playboy and a heavy drinker, gradually began to lose his grip on reality and his health began to fail,” the National Park Service noted in a biography of him. “Eventually King Bolden’s mother signed papers to have him committed to the Louisiana State asylum in Jackson where he would reside until his death in 1931. His mental illness was said to have been triggered by alcohol.”

There is only one known photograph of Bolden, and there are no known recordings of him playing his horn.

“The first definitive figure in America’s most recognizable art form, jazz, would disintegrate in the prime of his popularity and career,” the National Park Service’s biography notes.

There are also no signs of his home’s ties to history, but that doesn’t stop jazz buffs from flocking to it.

John Rogers, who was in town from Manchester, England, checked out the home for the second time. He said it appeared a little worse off than in the past. To lose it, he said, would be a devastating loss.

”It’s the home of Buddy Bolden, who’s not only important to New Orleans, he’s important to the entire world,” Rogers said. “And unless we do something about it, it’s gonna go -- and it’ll be gone forever. … (And) you just lost the most important bit of musical history in the last 100 years.”

The home has been owned by Greater St. Stephen Full Gospel Baptist Church since 2008. It sits in the shadow of the congregation’s former sanctuary at 1st and South Liberty streets and was occupied until at least 2005.

But in recent years, it has remained vacant. McCusker said he believes the church intended to tear it down.

Demolition, however, isn’t something the city would allow.

The home is a local historic landmark, which prohibits its owners from tearing it down. That designation, however, is otherwise toothless since it doesn’t require owners to do anything but board up the home.

McCusker said he worries the plan is demolition by neglect, something for which the city cited the home on March 19. A hearing on that has not yet been set. A walk around the home shows signs of deterioration, such as missing siding and other holes that let in the elements.

Brandon Boutin, Greater St. Stephen’s first assistant pastor, said that when the church is made aware of issues with the home, it sends crews out to make repairs.

“We try to comply with anything our city sends out,” Boutin said.

Four years ago, the church told The New Orleans Advocate it had plans to rehab the home, but so far nothing has happened.

Boutin told WWL that the church hasn’t forgotten about the home but that it has had to prioritize getting back into its former location. A fire raced through the sanctuary more than 10 years ago, and the struggle to find funding to rebuild has been difficult, he said.

“Since 2007 we’ve been trying to get it rebuilt, trying to be back in this community,” Boutin said.

He said a lack of money for projects such as the Bolden home rehab has also put the brakes on any possible work. Ideas including restoring the home in some way that would honor Bolden and his contribution to the city and its music.

The concern among preservationist and historians is that the city could lose more of its unique fabric if the home is lost.

While Bolden might largely be forgotten even the homes of Louis Armstrong, arguable the city’s most famous musician, are gone.

City Hall sits where Armstrong’s childhood home once stood, and a simple sign in front of the New Orleans Police Department’s headquarters marks the spot where he was born.

“You can’t really wrap your brain around what happened and how it happened and where it happened without having where it happened still standing,” said Sarina Mohan, the Preservation Resource Center’s education and outreach director.

Some might argue that a building is just that and nothing more. But Mohan said physical locations help a city’s history continue to live on. “It is ‘just a house,’ but ‘just a house’ is a place where something really major happened.”

The PRC has been successful in preserving the homes of some musicians, such as “Kid” Ory, and plaques noting those home’s place in history can be found around the city.

“It’s important to recognize who was there and what kind of history was made there,” Mohan said.

McCusker, the tour guide, said the plaque program is a way to bring attention to the problem that homes such as Bolden’s face. But he still worries about its fate.

“If we lose this house, I just got to think that generations later we’re going to scratch our heads and wonder how that could’ve happened,” he said.

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