Perry Mansion: Cultural center grows from the ashes

Picture of Perry Mansion courtesy of cultural center's official website found at bottom of post

Tribune:

One by one, local artists stepped onto a small stage in a spacious Englewood living room and crooned about lovers, belted out ballads about their children and lamented about a family member in jail.

The audience, seated on folding chairs and surrounded by artwork, chimed in with accolades: "That's right!" and "You know that's true!"

That kind of support for artists is exactly what Sam Smith envisioned when he opened the nonprofit Perry Mansion Cultural Center last fall in a Queen Anne-style home in one of the city's most crime-ridden and impoverished neighborhoods.
...
The 39-year-old real estate developer bought the 19-room burned-out neighborhood drug house at 7042 S. Perry Ave. in 2005 and has been working on it since.

"It's about instilling pride in a neighborhood," Smith, the center's executive director, said as he brushed dirt from his hydrangeas as if to wake them from their winter slumber. "I know what I'm doing is important."

Smith said many people thought he was crazy. But now, more say the project is brilliant. Some neighbors have even spruced up their own homes.

"To see a cultural center in this neighborhood is an inspiration," said Marcus Sterling Alleyne, a 32-year-old poet and painter who grew up down the street. "This is a gift to the neighborhood."

Ald. Freddrenna Lyle (6th) said the Perry Mansion is a psychological boost for a neighborhood that residents have to leave just to shop or go to the library.

"He's an inspiration to people he doesn't know," said Lyle, who is working with Smith to acquire nearby land for parking and to bring new trash cans, possibly decorated by youths, to the area.

"We have to begin to plant seeds through the entire community, and this is like when you come out in your garden and there is one flower surrounded by dirt and you think, 'Something can grow here,' " she said.

Read the whole thing!

A story about this place was already posted here on this blog.

There's a website @ www.perrymansion.org