Anne Trubek asks if it’s worth it to convert writers’ homes into museums:
It’s hard to imagine the two-story house on East 86th Street in Cleveland’s Fairfax neighborhood ever becoming a tourist destination. Pizza crusts, empty bags of spicy potato chips, and wrapping papers litter the green carpet. Huge holes dot the walls where the fixtures have been ripped out. The back door is open. “People will spend all day trying to get 10 cents worth of copper,” says Jay Gardner, the community-development director for the Fairfax Renaissance Development Corporation, as he picks up an old grate and puts it across the door latch to prevent another break-in.
Yet Gardner is excited about the house’s prospects. A week earlier, the development corporation purchased the property for $100 from the city of Cleveland and plans to spend $80,000 to $100,000 to restore it to its original condition and designate it a historic landmark. The house has a literary claim to fame: Langston Hughes lived here for about two years, starting in 1917, while he was in high school. He had moved to Cleveland shortly before with his mother, and when she left town he moved into this house, where he rented the attic room.
