Posted on 03/17/2018 4:12:56 AM PDT by SandRat
SIERRA VISTA — The Mountain View Officers’ Club on Fort Huachuca was a bustling banquet hall and social center for African-American soldiers more than 70 years ago.
Today, it sits vacant, and faced threats of demolition for years.
However, the historic building could receive a facelift in coming months.
After gaining the Army’s approval to restore the building to its original facade in December, national preservation groups are one step closer to getting the project off the ground.
Arizona State Parks & Trails received a $500,000 grant earlier this week to help restore the old building. Funding for the grant came from the National Park Service’s African-American Civil Rights Program, an endowment meant to preserve and document sites on African-American history and the struggle for equality.
Christina Morris, project manager for the restoration effort with the National Trust for Historic Preservation, said the grant will fund the first phase needed to complete the $4.4 million restoration.
The $500,000 will refurbish the outward appearance of the MVOC building to its original 1942 design and function as a social hall.
Though preservationists haven’t received grant funding just yet, Morris said she hopes restoration efforts will wrap up by the end of the calendar year.
“This is a critical piece and a critical first step toward that restoration and rehabilitation,” she said. “It’s been subject to a number of changes over the last 60 years by the Army and others who used the building.”
The restoration effort is also a chance to save a piece of American history.
When it was first built in 1942, the club, also known as the Black Officers’ Club, served as the recreation area for African-American service women and men during the days of racial segregation.
The building hosted social events, music and dance, and art exhibits by African-American artists.
Once segregation was outlawed, the building was eventually vacated in the 1990s, according to the Tucson Historic Preservation Foundation.
Now, the restoration project plans to revamp the building to its original style and preserve the history held within its old walls.
Once finished, Morris hopes the restoration project will revive the building and turn it into a meeting place for banquets, conferences, events and to better help meet the community’s needs.
“We want to make sure that the legacy survives in a positive and productive way,” Morris said. “That was a huge part of our proposal. It was not that this building had to be preserved just as a museum … but to make this a living, breathing and vital part of Fort Huachuca and Sierra Vista.”
To Morris and the other partners her organization works with, the officers club is an important reminder of the country’s past. There are only two buildings in the country, Morris said, that once served as black officers clubs.
“This is such critical piece of our Arizona legacy, our military legacy and the African-American legacy that is almost gone,” she said. “There are only a handful of buildings left that was, essentially, a separate base built for African-American soldiers. “This is a legacy that it almost gone nationally.”
Charles Hancock, president of the Southwest Association of Buffalo Soldiers, feels the same way. His organization has been working to save the club for more than 10 years — back when its future was uncertain.
Hancock said the building is more than a relic of the country’s segregated past.
He wants younger generations, including his own grandchildren, to understand what African-American soldiers experienced decades ago under racial divides.
“This highlights the racial discrimination and segregation that happened in the United States and in the military. … With the enemy, there was no discrimination on the battlefield. But in our barracks, our food halls and our recreational facilities, there was blatant discrimination,” Hancock said. “That’s a part of America’s past and America’s history.”
Restoring the building to a modern-day recreation center allows the community to never forget racial disparities in the past, while moving toward a more accepting future.
“When my grandkids and great-grandkids visit Fort Huachuca, through this building, they will be able to see what those soldiers had to endure in order to get to the position that we are in now, where everyone will be able to participate.
A wonderful way to waste money.
They tore my club down with a bulldozer in the 70’s. I guess it wasn’t that special?
Shouldn’t this monument to segregation be torn down?
Maybe if they put a confederate flag over it, that might get it torn down.
rwood
“Shouldn’t this monument to segregation be torn down?”
I haven’t noticed any big push by black club goers to hang out with whites.
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