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In purchasing Nina Simone’s childhood home in Tryon, North Carolina in 2017, the new owners (conceptual artist Adam Pendleton, sculptor and painter Rashid Johnson, collagist and filmmaker Ellen Gallagher, and abstract artist Julie Mehretu) felt that buying and preserving the home was itself a political act amid the Black Lives Matter movement and the attempted erasure of Black history. The artists plan to apply a collective vision to reinterpret Simone’s home into something that reflects her dynamic, complex legacy, but they can’t do it alone.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation and the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund have rethought what preservation can be in the 21st century. In partnership with the home’s new owners, our work to restore and preserve the Nina Simone Childhood Home exemplifies the spirit and energy of that pursuit.

A New Future for Nina Simone’s Past

Nina Simone’s Childhood Home is a 560 square foot, 3 room clapboard house, with a front porch opening onto its tree-ringed .21-acre plot on 30 East Livingston Street in Tryon, North Carolina. Simone’s family lived in the home from 1933 to 1937, and over several decades it passed through the hands of other owners who made alterations to the building before it fell vacant and into severe disrepair in the 1990’s. Multiple stalled attempts to rehabilitate the house throughout the early 2000’s required the removal of structural additions or ahistorical materials, returning it to its original 1930’s footprint and getting it ready for a new start.

Located in an historically African American neighborhood, the house is up the street from St. Luke’s CME Church, where Simone’s mother, Mary Kate Waymon, was a preacher and Simone herself first began playing piano. The town cemetery, and a Masonic Lodge are also located nearby and are historical mainstays of the community.

Alongside the inherent historical significance of the house itself, interpretation of the surrounding landscape on the property is a key aspect of bringing the experiences of Simone’s childhood to life. Archaeological surveys of the land, old family photographs, and the common practices of Black people living in the rural South, suggest there would have been a swept yard around the perimeter of the house, a kitchen garden, and a workshed. Marking these features in the home’s landscape will offer opportunities for visitors to learn more about the resilience, self-sufficiency, and connection to nature Simone and her family shared.

Furthermore, Tryon itself, founded in 1879, is a key part of Simone’s life story. In addition to St. Luke’s CME Church, the Tryon Theater hosted one of her first performances while she was still in elementary school. Soon after, she began taking lessons with Mrs. Muriel Mazzanovich, a local piano teacher, who helped her raise funds for her to continue her musical education through high school.

Recognizing the influence these, and other historic places in Tryon, played in Simone’s early life, the Action Fund is partnering with local leaders and North Carolina historic preservation organizations to develop plans for a “cultural district” surrounding The Nina Simone Childhood Home to create a holistic, immersive, and educational experiences for visitors, and support tourism and small businesses in Tryon’s East Side neighborhood.

Site Revitalization and Interpretation

Since 2017, the Action Fund has engaged with the local Tryon community and fans of Nina Simone everywhere to better understand what her work means to them, and as a result, how her childhood home can be preserved and reactivated to honor her enduring legacy. This outreach informed the decision to work with Mathews Architecture, P.A. and Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects to begin the sensitive repair and restoration of the property.

The Nina Simone Childhood Home will be restored as an interpreted historic site and a place of inspiration for visitors, artists and advocates. To elevate the beauty of the home experienced by Nina Simone and the Waymon family, and create an authentic presentation as possible, the house will be reopened to the public without replicated furniture or the addition of modern interior amenities.

Instead, the restoration will focus on repairing and preserving the original structure to prevent any further damage and allow guests to experience the house through minimally invasive accessibility upgrades such as leveling floors, repairing walls and windows, and installing a ramp alongside the building to access the front porch. Other facilities such as remote restrooms, programmable spaces, and a garden are envisioned for future phases of development on the property.

Our mission is to protect the home in perpetuity, amplify the cultural legacy of the site, and ignite a national conversation around the important role of artists as activists and preservationists.

Concentrating on Simone’s home and its immediate context, key locations are highlighted and labeled in this map with potential use opportunities in and around the site. These locations remain conceptual in nature, but identify areas of opportunity for modes of transportation, connection to the site, and use of the property once it is fully restored.

This concept is focused on fully restoring the Nina Simone Childhood Home and keeping it without any additions of modern amenities, providing an opportunity to preserve the authenticity of the home, space, and scale that was experienced by Nina Simone and her family. Visitors and artists could meditate and gain inspiration in offsite facilities. These could be located near the home or further out, creating an opportunity to connect with the wider community and the broader Nina Simone story.

Thanks to funding from the Mellon Foundation, the National Trust’s African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund is taking the lead role, in partnership with artists Rashid Johnson, Julie Mehretu, Adam Pendleton, and Ellen Gallagher, in fully rehabilitating and activating the Nina Simone Childhood Home. Previous funders Hillsdale Fund, Covington Foundation, World Monuments Fund, and Community Foundation of Western North Carolina also continue to support the work.

Currently, the Action Fund team is working with Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects and Mathews Architecture to complete planning and design documents for the home’s interior and landscape. The planning is scheduled to be completed by late 2022, with rehabilitation work anticipated to begin in early 2023.

The National Trust is seeking qualified contractors to complete the project. The full project scope will be released via RFP in late 2022.

As part of the ongoing efforts to protect and rehabilitate the house, the North Carolina National Register Advisory Committee has approved a nomination to list Simone’s childhood home on the National Register of Historic Places. The Department of the Interior is now considering it for final approval.

As a part of our Nina Simone Childhood Home National Treasure campaign, we are seeking proposals to complete exterior rehabilitation of the Nina Simone Childhood Home. This work is a continuation of stabilization efforts started in 2019, by the National Trust, World Monuments Fund and local partners. The exterior rehabilitation seeks to completed repairs and preserve the character of birthplace of legendary musician and civil rights activists Nina Simone in Tryon, NC.

The Request for Proposal (RFP) is available to download from savingplaces.org/requests-for-proposals.

Before becoming the High Priestess of Soul, Nina Simone was born and raised in Tryon, North Carolina, in a home where she was encouraged to find her voice—both through song and activism. Once in jeopardy, Simone’s childhood home was saved from demolition in part by the National Trust.

For several years, the National Trust has engaged the local community and fans of Nina Simone everywhere to better understand what her work means to them, and as a result, how her childhood home can be preserved, and re-activated to honor her enduring legacy.

Learn more about the plans and add your thoughts on the future of the space.

The National Trust’s African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund and its work at Nina Simone’s Childhood Home in Tryon, North Carolina, were featured in the October issue of Elle Décor magazine in an article titled “It’s a New Dawn at Nina Simone’s Childhood Home.”

The piece explains the site’s importance in Simone’s development as an artist, noting: “Her childhood in North Carolina left its mark, good and bad. She experienced her share of racial injustice growing up—and never forgot it. At the height of the civil rights movement, she composed the era’s most defiant song, “Mississippi Goddam,” in response to the assassination of NAACP leader Medgar Evers in Mississippi and the murder of four Black girls in a church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama.”

Read the full article and learn why Brent Leggs, the Fund’s Executive Director, hopes the project will inspire “another thousand artists to become involved in preservation to own and steward, while bringing life back to these kinds of spaces and honoring Black cultural legacies.’”

In September, the National Trust, in partnership with the World Monuments Fund and Preservation North Carolina, secured permanent protection of the home with a preservation easement. Learn more about this critical preservation step.