In this week's Your Hometown, we showcase one of seven buildings on the New York State Preservation League's list of buildings to save. Ithaca's Dennis-Newton House was the birthplace of the country's first intercollegiate African-American fraternity, Alpha Phi Alpha. Our Philip O'Driscoll details the history of the home, and the restoration efforts underway to save.
ITHACA, N.Y. -- Built around 1868, the Albany Street structure in Ithaca was home to Norman Dennis, a mason who founded the first African-American lodge of the Odd Fellows in Elmira, but it would be his daughter Lula and son-in-law Edward Newton who opened the home's doors to African-American Cornell students to serve as a central meeting place.
"It became a social studies club where the African-American students at the time could not form on the campus of Cornell and so this was a spot to facilitate that," said Sami Mesgun, pPresident of Cornell University's Alpha Chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha.
Newton and other students worked as porters at white fraternities on campus, and learned a lot from their experience.
"Seeing the role that these white fraternities were playing, the status that was given to students who were members of these fraternities, had the aspirations to start one of their own," said John Lewis, executive director of Historic Ithaca.
In 1906, seven of the students who regularly met at the home formed Alpha Phi Alpha, the first collegiate fraternity for African American students in the U.S. They would move their meeting place to an official fraternity house just a couple blocks away, on East State Street, but spread their message even further.
"We felt that there were multiple other students on other campuses dealing with the same issues that they were dealing with here. Howard University was a great place to start in terms of having a lot of African-American students, being a Historically Black College," said Armon Sadler, who serves as Social and Philanthropy Chairs as well as New Member Educator for Cornell's Alpha Phi Alpha chapter.
The growth continued from there, with chapters across the country boasting alumni like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Justice Thurgood Marshall, but the building where the idea was born has not held up as well. Lula and Edward Newton died in the 1930s with members of the Newton family still living in the home until the 1980s. The current owner is making repairs with ideas from Historic Ithaca, the fraternity, state and city.
"We're expanding the conversation, bringing in more people who have ideas that maybe we can together work with the owner to decide the best path forward in preserving this landmark," Lewis said.
For many, that includes opening its doors as a place to learn and be engaged, just like it was more than a hundred years ago.
"Using it for bringing children from the community to the house have music lessons. Ours would be more a historic thing that would work with GIAC," said Raymond Dalton, president of Cornell Alumni Iota Iota Lambda chapter.
No official plans have been announced. As for the original fraternity house on East State Street, local chapter members are looking to build a facade in the shape of the old house. A public plaza will be built behind it.
We reached out to the current owner of the Dennis-Newton House for comment.