A Plainfield man is looking to preserve the Thomas Fortune House in Red Bank, which was home to the African-American journalist and civil rights activist.

A white two-story Victorian house on Bergen Place still stands vacant and boarded up, looking ripe for demolition.

And that's what worries Peter Primavera of Plainfield. So much that he sent a flurry of emails and made phone calls inquiring about the fate of the house, seeking assurances that the T. Thomas Fortune House still was standing. After learning that it was intact, Primavera started a Facebook page Wednesday for the next step, to raise funds and awareness to buy the house before the next crisis hits.

"What precipitated the calls to action is that the house has been vandalized and it's boarded up and taken off the market," said Primavera, who is a historic preservation consultant.

Timothy Thomas Fortune was a late-19th, early-20th century African-American journalist and Civil Rights activist, having founded the New York Age newspaper, which was the most widely read black newspaper of the day. He moved into the house in 1901 and did much of his editing work there. Civil Rights leaders such as Booker T. Washington visited Fortune at his Red Bank address.

"The Thomas Fortune House is a national landmark. It is on the level of the Monmouth Battlefields and the Sandy Hook lighthouse," he said. "If someone was to say, 'what is the most significant place in Red Bank?,' it's the Thomas Fortune House."

Mayor Pasquale Menna said that he and Councilman Edward Zipprich received correspondence about the status of the Fortune House from the Landmarks Bureau of the National Park Service, the Monmouth County Historical Society and a prominent historic architect. Both confirmed there is no active application for a demolition permit.

Red Bank officials sent a certified letter to the current property owners reminding them that demolition permits have to be obtained, which the borough has to review and sign off on, Menna said.

Primarvera said he isn't blaming the property owners, who have tried unsuccessfully to sell the house.

"I sympathize with the owners, they were caught in a bad real estate market," he said. "We're not adversarial with the owners, we're trying to come up with a way to buy it. I'm trying to bring it to the attention of people with the resources to save it."

In 2007, "outbuildings" on the site, including a garage, a bungalow and bakery were demolished. While the house is on the National Register of Historic Places, that designation won't save it from demolition if the owners want to tear it down.

"This is a situation where we know what will happen next. We're beyond the eleventh hour," Primarvera said. "Something has to be done now."

The house has been on and off the market between 2007, when Preservation New Jersey put it on its list of 10 most endangered sites in the state and now, after Zipprich and George Bowden, Historic Preservation Commission chairman emeritus, lobbied to get it listed.

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Historian mounts campaign to buy the Fortune House in Red Bank

A white two-story Victorian house on Bergen Place still stands vacant and boarded up, looking ripe for demolition.

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