legacy REVIVAL
LATE BLACK DOCTOR REMEMBERED AS BUILDING IS REDEVELOPED
C.W. Morgan is smiling a lot more these days as he passes the corner of NE 4 and Lincoln.
For years, his family’s legacy, the two-story, Art Deco Morgan Building was boarded up and cut off from surrounding streets.
But the glass blocks and new windows are providing passers-by like Morgan proof the property finally is coming back to life after numerous sales from one owner to another who failed to make any significant repairs.
JHBR, an architecture firm, recently moved into the second floor of the building while renovations continue on the first floor.
This was the building where Morgan’s father, Dr. Charles Morgan, gave his life serving a black community deprived of care at the city’s medical establishments during the Jim Crow era.
“I can see through with their lights on,” C.W. Morgan said Monday. “I can see activity going on. They’re doing all the right things. It’s my challenge at age 66 to live long enough to see it all come to fruition.”
The Morgan story is part of what attracted Branson Young, principal architect at JHBR, to the building a dozen years ago. He first sought to buy the building in 2004, but was rebuffed by its owners.
He then noticed the building was up for sale last year as the firm was looking to move from its former home along Film Row.
“The building escaped all the downtown demolition,” Young said. “We don’t have a lot of surviving examples of Art Deco architecture. It has that streamlined appearance to it. It’s a bit of a rarity. And then we discovered the history.”
Charles Morgan was orphaned as a teenager but
still managed to go to college and medical school in Nashville. It was there that he married Augusta McFarland and followed her back to begin his career in her hometown, Oklahoma City.
In those days of Jim Crow, NE 2 and NE 4 east of the BNSF Railway Viaduct were the main business corridors for the city’s black community.
Morgan built his clinic at the intersection of NE 4 and Durland Avenue in 1946, next to where the first all-black YMCA would be built next-door a few years later.
“He constructed the Morgan Building to be a true clinic,” C.W. Morgan said. “He did his own lab work, his own X-rays. He couldn’t be admitted to the hospitals, or he was relegated to their basements.”
Shared building
Charles Morgan shared his building with Dr. Byron Biscoe, a dentist, and pharmacist Dewey Moore. The remaining first floor spaces were rented out to a florist and beauty salon.
The basement, meanwhile, was converted into a lounge and leased to the men’s fraternity, Kappa Alpha Psi.
C.W. Morgan was among a group of prominent black doctors in the community that included G.E. Findley and W.L. Haywood. In later years, reviewing his father’s financial books, C.W. Morgan saw numerous times when the doctor accepted chickens or just a dollar or two for his time and effort.
“My father’s practice was very strenuous — he was one of those doctors who did house calls,” C.W. Morgan said. “He would often travel in the middle of the night to homes off the beaten path. I must have about six, seven years old when I saw marks on the top of his shoulders. He had gone out on a night time call and he got caught in a thunderstorm and his car got stuck in the mud. He was near the house, he started walking and it began to hail. He used the medical bag to protect his head, but the hail stripped the clothing off his back and he was scarred for life.”
Such dedication made Morgan a beloved figure. But C.W. Morgan also believes the strain led to his early death at age 53 in 1962.
His death came just weeks after he was appointed the city’s first black medical examiner. His death made local television news, and three packed funeral services were held in his honor.
The practice closed briefly and then reopened. But times were changing. The other practices closed as the doctors died or retired. Integration ripped apart the fabric of a community held together by the Jim Crow laws.
Urban Renewal and construction of Interstate 235 destroyed the heart of the old black business district. The fraternity moved in 1988. The beauty salon closed when the Morgans sold their building in 1996.
When Young, along with JHBR President Kevin Williams and vice president Jack Joiner learned the Morgan history, they invited C.W. Morgan to tour the building. They shared their vision.
“I can’t express sufficiently how impressed I am with the plans they have shared with me the plans for that building,” C.W. Morgan said.
“They are going to highlight the fact it was the Morgan family’s building. I am very proud of that.”