ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla. — A legendary American author once called the First Coast home. Now, the St. Augustine house where Zora Neale Hurston lived is for sale.
Historians would love to see it saved from demolition.
"Zora Neale Hurston had been here (in St. Augustine) many times in her life," said Historian David Nolan. "She was married here in the 1920s."
Nolan said she also lived and worked in St. Augustine in the 1940s where she revised her autobiography Dust Tracks on a Road.
She worked on that book inside the room she rented in a house at 791 West King Street.
"This was the most successful book of her lifetime," Nolan noted. "It won her an award of the best book of race relations of the year."
That house, built in 1930, has a historical marker out front and a portrait of the prolific writer on the side of it. The asking price is $299,990.
Ms. Pasco was the last person to live in the home. She just passed away. She was 100-years-old, according to Nolan. Realtor Lavardis Anderson told First Coast News that Pasco's family is selling the house and the lot next to it, and that the family would love to see it preserved.
Nolan would too. "One way or another, I would like the house to be saved," Nolan said.
Anderson told First Coast News there is some interest by private buyers in turning the house into a museum. Anderson said he would support seeing the house saved by the community.
The two-story building is indeed a fixer-upper.
Noland nodded, "The people who lived in it did not have millions of dollars to spend on it. But the history that happened there can’t be reproduced. This is one of the very few still standing places in Florida where Zora Neale Hurston lived."
Turning the place into a tourist site could possibly boost West Augustine, an economically depressed area.
"Nowadays you can go to Key West and see Earnest Hemingway’s house. It's a museum," Nolan said. "You can go to Cross Creek and see Marjorie Rawlings' house, and I hope someday you can come to St. Augustine and see Zora Neale Hurston’s house."