Housed in a hip Brooklyn building, the Malcolm X House near the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, is a place for Harlem history.
Last year, I interviewed artist Dick Shipley, who had documented the house’s history, as I did with John Ruddy’s Bronx building. He said it was not a place for “hyper-tourism.”
Architect Jay Kadash is now doing an urban exploration of the house. He has several images of historic structures in the works.
He’s also posted some photos of the house, and has posted this video of a walking tour of the property, which includes a black-and-white video of Malcolm X’s first visit to Boston, back in 1964, a year before his assassination.
In 2001, a group of Malcolm X supporters formed the Malcolm X Renaissance Committee Inc. to identify the family of the late West Indian leader. The organization listed the Boston home on its website as a place where Malcolm X would’ve wanted to be.
While the house, located on 45 Tremont Street, was once owned by a family in the Nation of Islam, Malcolm X’s sister, Mrs. Betty Shabazz, used to live in Boston and helped preserve the house after it became a total loss in a fire in the mid-1990s.
