Crumbling KC home of Negro Leagues great Satchel Paige takes big step toward renovation

The weeds at the front of the house stand 10 inches high. Its clapboard is rotted and peeling in sheets. The walls, floors and ceilings inside the Kansas City home that Negro Leagues legend Leroy Robert “Satchel” Paige occupied for the last 32 years of his life still sit charred, blackened to charcoal following a 2018 fire.

Yet the leaders of a mission — one that had largely stalled — to restore the 3,700-square-foot home of the Kansas City Monarchs pitcher are feeling the most hopeful they have since their effort began six years ago.

They said the New York-based Mellon Foundation has donated $750,000 to the home’s restoration, the largest single gift put toward a project that ultimately could cost as much as $5 million to $7 million.

“This grant is a big deal” said Gary Abram, a partner in the PLX Corp. and one of four board members of the nonprofit Leroy Satchel Paige Family Home Corp. who conceded that the project has, in recent years, “been treading water.”

“This is a big, big opportunity to reestablish the importance of the project,” Abram said.

He said his hope is that the backing of a national foundation will spur investment from local philanthropic groups that previously expressed interest, such as the Hall Family Foundation, the Sunderland Foundation, the Kauffman Foundation and the Kansas City Royals.

To Abram and others, the brick and clapboard home in Kansas City’s historic Santa Fe neighborhood is a landmark that deserves to be preserved.

Paige, from the 1920s on, was one of the most famous players in the Negro Leagues. During his career, he pitched for the Birmingham Black Barons, the Cleveland Cubs and the Pittsburgh Crawfords. Then, from 1941 to 1947, he was the Kansas City Monarchs’ pitcher.

In 1948, at age 42, he entered Major League Baseball, playing for the Cleveland Indians before going on to play for the St. Louis Browns and Kansas City Athletics.

In 1971, Paige was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown.

He lived in his home at 2626 E. 28th Street with his wife, Lahoma, from 1950, in the age of Jim Crow, to 1982, raising their eight children and entertaining fellow legends like Count Basie, Duke Ellington and the Harlem Globetrotters.

The house sat vacant for 30 years. Fire, suspected to be arson, engulfed much of the home in 2018, destroying its roof and blackening its interior. The home remains on the city’s “dangerous buildings” list. Surrounded by a locked chain-link fence, it still wafts with the odor of charred wood.

The Kansas City Homesteading Authority bought the home soon after the fire. Using a $150,000 grant from the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the city replaced the roof, removed the mess and shored up its interior. In 2021, the homesteading authority asked developers to submit proposals on how they would repurpose the structure.

Pitch Perfect KC was formed that same year.

Led at the time by managing developer Vincent Gauthier, who has since stepped away, the group brought together individuals interested in historic preservation, along with the Santa Fe Area Council, Paige family members and the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum.

They presented the winning proposal, which not only includes restoring the 2 1/2-story home, but also building a separate and detached event space at the rear of the house. They also hope to accrue enough money to fund an endowment to support the house, grounds and event center.

Missouri State Sen. Barbara Washington in 2021 announced that the state would contribute $500,000 to the project. While Pitch Perfect KC would develop the project, the Leroy Satchel Paige Family Home nonprofit would own and operate the home.

From 2021 forward, the project and fundraising essentially stalled, Abram said. As of Tuesday, a website on the project, satchelshouse.org, had yet to create a portal for online donations. They expect one to be up soon.

“With this funding we will see some changes. We will see some things happening, which is what we all want,” said Marquita Taylor, part of Pitch Perfect and president of the Santa Fe Area Council neighborhood association. “The start of more interest is what I’m hoping for.”

Architect Robert Riccardi, a principal with Multistudio (formerly Gould Evans) and part of Pitch Perfect KC, said some of the $750,000 will be used to renovate the deteriorating outside of the house. He expects work to begin before the end of the year.

“We think the story (of the house) is such a rich story,” said Abrams, who in the early 1970s was a minor league pitcher, having been drafted by the Pittsburgh Pirates. “It’s not only a baseball story, but a civil rights story. Hopefully, we can attract all kind of folks and turn it into something that really celebrates the family, the neighborhood, baseball in Kansas City, the Negro Leagues.

“You know, Satchel was, I would say, the Michael Jordan of his time. There was certainly nobody of higher profile in the Negro Leagues.”

Reporter Mike Hendricks contributed to this story.