An introduction to Tenth Street’s Little Blue House

Ribbon cutting for the Tenth Street Neighborhood Resource Center, known as the Little Blue House. Photo courtesy of bcWORKSHOP.

On Juneteenth in the summer of 2024, the backyard of what is affectionately known as the Little Blue House was filled with chitchatting and the swing of a tenor sax. It had been a while since residents visited the space, and it was the first time the Tenth Street Neighborhood Resource Center was open to the public.

Founded in the late 19th century by formerly enslaved people, Tenth Street is the largest remaining Freedman’s Town in the United States. The 69 acres was built to be self-sufficient with homes, churches, schools and businesses within the district. The Tenth Street Historic District was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1994. 

Originally slated for demolition, the house at 1208 E. 10th St. was picked up by buildingcommunityWORKSHOP, a Texas-based nonprofit that seeks to improve the livability and viability of communities through the practice of thoughtful design and making.

It had been a long time coming, nearly a decade since the purchase of the house in 2017 to opening day last year. Pei-en Yang, a design manager at bcWORKSHOP, said the organization bought the space with the plan to renovate the interior for neighborhood use. 

“We’ve just kind of started out, and we’re really trying to kind of keep this space active,” Yang said. “And so we’re looking to continue to find ways to program the space, either from a cultural arts perspective or from a neighborhood advocacy perspective in the sense of workshops for home repair or title clearance or property tax relief.”

So far, that has included hosting neighborhood meetings or programming that focuses on various art forms.

Hakeem Adewumi, a Dallas-born and raised artist, recently completed a residency working as a creative director with the Little Blue House to develop programming this past summer. 

“Learning about their work in 10th Street was something that I think I’ve always been interested in – making sure my work is centered around Black folk and has a very specific vernacular that I really appreciate,” he said.

Working with the Little Blue House matched his ambitions. He hosted several performances honoring Black artists, such as a tribute to singer-guitarist T-Bone Walker, and workshops centered around creative arts like cyanotypes or woodworking. He pointed out that poetry night and the opera performance from Dallas Opera singer Johnny Brown were some of the most successful.

Cyanotype prints from one the workshops coordinated by Hakeem Adewumi. Photo courtesy of bcWORKSHOP.

“I think artistry and creativity are foundational aspects of Black life,” Adewumi said. “And I think it should be something that is constantly mirrored in the neighborhood despite what we may think and assume about it based on what it looks like.”

The music curations were a big hit with neighbors, something that they would like to see come back.

Larry Johnson is vice president of Tenth Street Residential Association (TSRA) and has been working with restoration around the neighborhood for about five years. Although he didn’t work on the Little Blue House, he is close to completing the restoration of another house in the district.

Johnson said that he would love to see even more music from different cultural and ethnic backgrounds, along with food because “you cannot have music without food.”

Blues in the backyard of the Little Blue House. Photo courtesy of bcWORKSHOP.

Rosa Medrano, assistant secretary for TSRA, said she would like to see a recreation center of sorts in the space, so that kids of the neighborhood don’t have to go all the way down by the river to access one.

“(The Little Blue House) serves as an example of the type of preservation that we’re wanting in Tenth Street, but also the massing of homes that we want here in Tenth Street to fit the historic fabric of the neighborhood,” he said.

Shaun Montgomery, also with TSRA, said that is the goal of restoration rather than continuing tear downs of historic homes.

“The resemblance of the neighborhood, and keeping the culture and the history of these properties in the neighborhood,” she said.

When the space is dormant from programming, the history takes center stage. Within the walls of the Little Blue House, displays of photos and maps bring to life the buried past. Most recently, they were on full display with the 2025 Heritage Oak Cliff Fall Home Tour. This was the first time any Tenth Street structure was featured for the event.

The maps on display inside the Little Blue House. Photo by Victoria Hernandez.

One such display was created by the Texas A&M University’s architecture studio. Students and professors researched what future typologies could look like in the neighborhood, later creating a 3D model and map of the district highlighting homes that were demolished, current homes, and planned homes surrounding the Little Blue House. 

Most recently, three additional maps were added to show changes over time for the neighborhood: one from 1922, one from 1968 and one from 2025.

“It basically shows the impact that the highway has had and also disinvestment in this neighborhood over time,” Yang said.

While the Little Blue House is filled with history, she said that bcWORKSHOP is looking to hear from Tenth Street residents about the future of the space.

“This space is for the neighborhood,” Yang said. “We had two years of programming now, and we want to know how it went and what you guys want to see more of in the future.”