Nearly twenty years ago, Allen University took a historic home where one of its past presidents had lived and moved it two blocks over to make room for new dorms.
As part of the relocation, the university promised to restore the home to a livable condition, so future presidents could live there, too. But that never happened.
Now, the deteriorating Robert Weston Mance House on Heidt Street, less than half a mile from the university’s core, is coming down. The demolition comes after a years-long legal battle to try to save the house, and as a neighborhood leader has called it a safety issue and has lobbied for it to be razed.
Historic house tied to Civil Rights
Today, the two-story American Foursquare frame house is a sea of broken beams, tufts of insulation and general rubble. Crews have started to take the building down. Teeth of a wooden railing hang loose and sharp from the front porch. The door is boarded but ajar. Two large black dumpsters overflow with more of the home’s detritus in the front yard…