Pearl and I.T. Creswell House: International-style at Fisk University

Located at 910 17th Street North on Nashville’s historic Fisk University campus, this Miesian town house was completed in 1963 for Pearl Creswell and her husband Isaiah Thornton “I.T.” Creswell. Pearl was an art curator and Isaiah was the university’s comptroller. Both were involved in seeking equality and social justice during the Civil Rights Movement. The couple hired Donald E. Stoll & Associates of Nashville to create their modish and cultured home. Architect Robert M. Anderson, Jr. is attributed with the design of this exemplar of International-style artistry in Tennessee.

Pearl Creswell

A native of El Paso, Texas, Pearl Winifred Sanders Creswell (1912-1994) was the daughter of a professor at Prairie View A&M University near Houston. She graduated from Nashville’s Fisk University in 1932, the same year she married Isaiah T. Creswell, a university faculty member (see below). Pearl Creswell served as an art curator at Fisk from 1939 to 1991. In 1949, Dr. Charles S. Johnson (1893-1956), president of Fisk and a noted Civil Rights Movement leader, appointed Creswell as the first curator for the Van Vechten Art Gallery. She immediatly went to work with renowned American Modernist artist Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986) to organize the Alfred Stieglitz Collection, which contained 101 works of art, ranging from African masks to Modernist paintings.

Most of the objects had been collected by O’Keeffe’s late husband, Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946), a photographer, gallery owner, and tireless champion of American Modernists. The Alfred Stieglitz Collection contained works by Georgia O’Keeffe, Alfred Stieglitz, Charles Demuth, Marsden Hartley, Diego Rivera, Paul Cezanne, Pablo Picasso, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, John Marin, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, among many others. To house the world-class collection, Fisk converted the original 1889 Gymnasium and Mechnical Arts Building (NRHP, 1978) into the Van Vechten Art Gallery named for Carl Van Vechten (1880-1964), a New York music critic, novelist, and Fisk benefactor. The gallery and its advant-garde exhibits opened to the public in November 1949.

Creswell managed the art collection under the guidance of Harlem Renaissance artist Aaron Douglas (1899-1979), founder and chairman of Fisk’s Art Department from 1944 to 1966. During her tenure as the university’s art curator, Creswell expanded the reach of the famous Stieglitz Collection by offering art educational programs for the public and opening the gallery at no cost for schoolchildren.

Creswell was also involved in the Nashville Civil Rights Movement. In 1939, she cofounded the Mother’s Study Group, which sought to improve the quality of life for young African American mothers by advocating for culture, service, and learning. In 1947, this group evolved into the Nashville chapter of the Jack and Jill of America, a civic organization for Black women. It was the first Jack and Jill chapter in the Southeast. She volunteered at the YWCA Blue Triangle Branch, the city’s segregated facility for Black residents, and served on the board of directors for the Nashville Chapter of the NAACP. Creswell was a member the National Urban League and Nashville’s Citizens for Housing and Urban Development Committee. For many years, Creswell was also involved with voting registration.

Isaiah Thornton “I.T.” Creswell

A native of Mound Bayou, Mississippi, Isaiah Thornton “I.T.” Creswell (1902-1992) graduated from Fisk in 1927 and then found work in the university’s accounting department before studying for a couple of years at Northwestern and the University of Chicago. He met Pearl Sanders while she was a student at Fisk. In July 1932 they announced their engagement at a reception in Fisk’s Jubilee Hall (NHL, 1974) and married at Houston the following month. He served as Fisk’s comptroller from 1945 until his retirement in 1967. For many years, he owned the Creswell Service Station on Jefferson Street. Creswell was president of the American Association of College and University Business Officers. Pearl and Isaiah Creswell raised three children, Carol (b.1934), Pearl (1935-1949), Isaiah T. Jr. (1938-2002).

Creswell was also involved in the Civil Rights Movement. In the late 1950s, he served on the executive committee of the Nashville Community Relations Conference, a biracial grassroots group of civic leaders that successfully advocated for the integration of schools. In 1966, he became the first African American to serve on the Metropolitan Nashville Board of Education and in 1978, he became the first Black chairman of the board. In 2012, the city erected a plaque for him as part of the “Gateway to Heritage Plaza” created beneath the I-40 overpass along Jefferson Street. In 2016, the Wharton Arts Middle Magnet School was renamed the Isaiah T. Creswell Middle School of the Arts, a magnet school for the visual and performing arts, in his honor.

Donald E. Stoll & Associates

After living in on-campus faculty housing for 30 years, in 1962 the Creswells commissioned the design of their Modernist home to the Nashville architectural firm Donald E. Stoll & Associates. Donald Edwin Stoll (1924-1999), who graduated with a degree in architecture from the University of Illinois in 1950, founded the firm in 1959. Noted Modernist architect Earl Swensson (1930-2022) was one of his early partners. Stoll was best known for designing large commercial buildings, churches, motels, and apartments. In 1961, Stoll designed the Fisk President’s House, a contemporary stone Ranch house at 1604 Jackson Street. This commission introduced the Creswells to Stoll and his firm.

Robert M. “Bob” Anderson, Jr.

Working as an associate for Donald E. Stoll & Associates, the design of the Creswell home is attributed to Robert McCutcheson “Bob” Anderson, Jr. (1936-2014). A Nashville native, Anderson earned a bachelor’s of architecture in 1959 from Auburn University in Alabama. In 1960, he joined Donald E. Stoll’s firm where he worked until 1968 when he left to open his own studio. An example of Anderson and Stoll’s work is renovated Belcourt Theater (1962) at Hillsboro Village.

From the 1960s through the 1980s, Anderson designed many ultra-modern homes for well-to-do clients in Nashville. His work has been featured in the New York Times and Architectural Digest as well as liftestyle magazines such as Garden & Gun and Southern Living.

In February 1962, the Creswells purchased a 50 foot by 132 foot lot at 910 17th Street North, adjacent to the Fisk University Alumni House, the former circa 1905 Victorian home of Dr. Thomas W. Talley (1870-1952), a Fisk chemistry professor who published Black folk songs. In February 1963, Stoll requested a city zoning variance for setback and rear yard requirements for the narrow lot. Located at the southern end of the campus, the lot was less than one block south of the university’s iconic entrance gate.

Anderson designed the 40 foot by 118 foot home on a grid with a flat roof supported by thin wood columns, brick veneer walls, a partial screen wall for the slate-covered front patio, and a brick chimney. The interior exhibits high ceilings, clerestory windows for privacy, an interior courtyard with floor-to-ceiling windows, slate-covered floors, redwood walls and trim, and a kitchen terrace. The house has built-in features such as bridge table and a travertine buffet shelf. An attached garage is accessed from the rear service alley. The Creswells did not want a yard to care for, so the house is surrounded by natural landscaping and a low stone wall. In 1964, Jet magazine congratulated the Creswells on the completion of their “ultra modern glass and redwood residence.”

Pearl Creswell hired local interior decorator Stephen Ferris (1921-2010) to design the interior, which featured modern furniture, vertical window panels, and decorations. (Ferris also designed the interior of the 1961 President’s House at Fisk.) In 1969, the Creswell home was included in a tour of eight homes owned by prominent art collectors in Nashville. On display were objects from her private collection, including contemporary works by artists Walter H. Williams (1920-1988), Ralph Scharff (1922-1993), and local folk art sculptor William Edmonson (1874-1951).

The residence was also home for Isaiah Thornton “Tony” Creswell Jr. (1938-2002), the couple’s only son. After graduating from Amherst College in Massachusetts in 1960, Creswell returned to Nashville where he attended Vanderbilt University’s law school, graduating in 1963. In Nashville, he worked for city agencies before joining George Barrett (1927-2014) in 1966 to form one of the first integrated law firms in the South. In the late 1960s, they represented members of the Student Nonviolent Coordination Committee who had been expelled from Tennessee State University. In 1967 Creswell moved to Washington, D.C. where he worked with politicians and several government agencies, including the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Later he worked in Knoxville as TVA’s vice president of minority resources. Creswell attributed his “social consciousness” to his parents.

The Creswell House is currently owned by Pearl and Isaiah Creswell’s daughter, Carol Creswell-Betsch, a Fisk alumnus and retired librarian with Metro Nashville schools. Although the house is located within the boundary of the Fisk University Historic District (NRHP, 1978), it is designated a non-contributing building due to the district’s period of significance. However, in 2016 the Metro Historical Commission recommended the Creswell House NRHP-eligible as part of an updated district nomination.

In 1990, Fisk University established the Pearl Sanders Creswell Art Restoration Fund. In 2010, Carol Creswell-Betsch established the Pearl Creswell Fund for the Alfred Stieglitz Collection at Fisk University. In 2012, Fisk sold a half-interest in the Stieglitz Collection to the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art Museum in Arkansas. The collection rotates between the two institutions biannually.

Postscript

Pearl Creswell was an art curator at Fisk University for over 50 years and served as curator of the world-renowned Alfred Stieglitz Collection for over 40 years. A Fisk alumnus, she was an educator who introduced modern art to thousands of schoolchildren and countless members of the public. Beginning in the 1930s, she was a leader in the local grassroots efforts for Black equality and social justice. Pearl Creswell was a tireless champion for Black women, working mothers, and children. Her one-of-a-kind Modernist home is one of the few, as well as best, examples of International-style residential architecture in Tennessee. There are currently no historic markers or public exhibits that tell Pearl Creswell’s extraordinary story. Nor are there any civic landmarks named in her honor.

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