ATLANTA — It’s one of the last looks inside the birth home of Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. before its closure.
The home, which sits on Auburn Avenue, will shut down temporarily for routine upkeep, according to the National Park Service (NPS). It will reopen its doors in 2025.
“When we have the amount of visitors that we have come here every year, it’s very difficult to not have everything safe and protected. We have to put it sort of in a commercial way because of the volume of visitors who come here,” said Marty Smith, NPS Chief of Interpretation and Education. “We want to continuously keep it up for future generations who come through here.”
In fact, Smith said after they reopened their doors because of the pandemic, they had over 1.5 million visitors.
In order to welcome more visitors, the home itself needs to be preserved.
“We’re here to preserve it so future generations have an opportunity to be here, to enjoy the resources that we have here,” he said.
The renovations will include implementing a new air conditioning and dehumidifier system, strengthening the foundation, doing plumbing work around the house, as well as upgrading the cellar.
“It’s a dirt cellar, but when you come back, it’s going to be a cement cellar,” he said. “They’re going to cement that area to keep the moisture and everything out of the house.”
Cosmetic repairs such as the porch, painting, fence replacement and driveway regrading will also be part of the rehabilitation.
You’ll also notice a lot of work done to the exterior in order to make the historic site more accessible for tourists with special needs.
“We’re doing an accessibility lift out in the back,” Smith said. “We’re going to widen the door a little bit to get the wheelchairs to come through here, so people will have a lot of access to be able to get inside the property.”
Officials said they will remove and store the museum collection housed in the home off-site during the project.
When doors reopen in 2025, officials will put everything back into its place.
“We’re going to put them in a nice, secure area. Once they get through with the renovation, we’ll bring them back and set them up and have everything back the way it was when Dr. King’s mother was there. So her input will always be inside his house, as well as Ms. Farris,” Smith said.
Smith added they hope to reopen prior to 2025, but since it is an older, historic structure, they want to give the rehab enough time to be done right. The Queen-Anne Style home was built in 1895.
“It’s so important because people think they know Dr. King as an adult. But a lot of times they don’t know his life and his family structure and what his family was all about,” Smith added. “The great things that he learned from his grandmothers and his grandfather and his father and his mother. Those stories are pretty amazing to a lot of visitors when they come here and see the great roots of his tree that made him grow to the person that he was.”
He added tourists will still be able to experience Dr. King’s birth home with a virtual 360 tour of the house.
“We’re going to have new QR code cards that you can look at and you can see what the interior of the birth home looked like during that period of time,” he added. “We also have some walking tours where rangers are going to be walking up and down the street to provide some of that information.”
While closed, the interpretation and other visitor services will also continue through partnerships with the King Center to include walking tours, virtual programming and special commemorations and events.