The Jackson House — Tampa, Florida

The Jackson House, also known as the Jackson Rooming House, is a wood boarding house at 851 Zack Street on the north end of downtown Tampa. For most of the twentieth century it gave rooms to Black railroad workers, entertainers and travelers who were barred from Tampa's white hotels. The City of Tampa SoulWalk marker states that while it was not the only boarding house or hotel for Black visitors to Tampa, it is the only one that remains standing.

Clio records that the Jackson Rooming House was added to the National Register of Historic Places on March 7, 2007. The building has 24 rooms, grown from a six-room cottage. As of October 2026 it is badly deteriorated: Bay News 9 reported that another portion collapsed in September 2026, weeks after the city's Community Redevelopment Agency approved a restoration agreement with the Jackson House Foundation.

Moses and Sarah Jackson built the house as a private residence. The City of Tampa dates it to the late 1890s; Clio and ABC Action News give 1901. The family converted it into a boarding house while continuing to live there, a change the city says may have begun as early as 1910. Clio describes how the Jacksons added rooms and a second story to the original cottage to run the rooming house.

Location drove its growth. The house grew in importance and in physical size after Tampa Union Station opened, the city states, because the railroad station stood less than one block to the east on the edge of downtown. That made the Zack Street house the nearest lodging for African American railroad workers and for Black visitors stepping off the trains, and porters from Union Station roomed there, according to 83 Degrees.

The SoulWalk text explains why such houses mattered: through the early 1960s, African Americans were prohibited from staying in white hotels, motels and boarding houses in Tampa. Clio adds that in the early twentieth century Black travelers had few lodging options beyond the homes of friends and relatives, so Black-owned hotels and boarding houses were essential. The Jackson family kept the building throughout its life as a boarding house, which the city says ended in the 1990s (Clio gives 1989), and then used it as a private residence until 2010.

The guest list is what made the Zack Street house famous. Clio lists Ray Charles, Ella Fitzgerald, James Brown, Cab Calloway, Count Basie and Jackie Robinson among those who boarded there. ABC Action News reported that Martin Luther King Jr. and Count Basie also stayed, and Bay News 9 adds Nat King Cole. Clio notes that many of these guests performed in the nightclubs of the Black business district on Central Avenue, a few blocks away, until the 1960s.

Some stories come from the Jackson family itself. 83 Degrees Media reported in February 2024 the family account that Ella Fitzgerald worked on A-Tisket, A-Tasket while staying at the Tampa house, and that musicians jammed in a large first-floor room that once held three pianos. The same article quotes the Tampa Bay History Center's curator of Black history saying he had seen no documentation to verify the family recollections he had heard years earlier. The guest list therefore rests on a mix of published accounts and oral history.

83 Degrees also describes the boarding house as a family enterprise. According to the foundation's account, the Jackson and Robinson family ran a taxi company and offered meals, laundry, a beauty shop and a barber shop alongside the Zack Street rooms.

The Jackson House outlived the neighborhood around it. Clio states that during urban renewal in the 1970s, the areas surrounding the house were destroyed or leveled, and it calls the house the lone survivor of the Central Avenue district. Vacant lots and surface parking still surround the building north of downtown Tampa.

The City of Tampa now marks the site through SoulWalk, its program of permanent historical markers that commemorate the people, places and events that shaped Tampa's Black communities. The SoulWalk marker list places the Jackson House alongside markers for the Woolworth Sit-In, The Scrub, Dobyville, Memorial Park Cemetery and Jimi Hendrix, and the city states that eleven new markers are planned for installation in 2026.

The restoration has been slow and expensive. 83 Degrees reported in February 2024 that the Jackson House Foundation wanted to rebuild the house as it was and open it as a Black history museum. Money had been committed: $1 million from Tampa Bay Lightning owner Jeff Vinik, $1.5 million from the State of Florida, $1 million in Community Redevelopment Area funds set aside by the Tampa City Council and $500,000 from Hillsborough County. The obstacle was access. In October 2023 the City of Tampa and the owners of the neighboring 717 Parking lot agreed to swap property to create the emergency vehicle easements required on each side of the house, though details were still unsettled in early 2024.

Designation adds a constraint. The same report states that for the Jackson House to keep its federal, state and local landmark status, it has to be put back together exactly as it was, and foundation leaders said a replica at 851 Zack Street was a fallback if the easements failed.

The work has drawn institutional partners. ABC Action News reported that construction crews had moved onto the site across from the Amtrak station and that USF and the Tampa Bay History Center had offered help. The Tampa City Council has repeatedly asked for updates, and 83 Degrees reported that a presentation by the foundation, the history center and USF was postponed several times, most recently from the February 15, 2024, council meeting to May 2.

In 2026 events moved quickly. Bay News 9 reported on September 9, 2026, that a portion of the house collapsed on Monday, less than three weeks after Tampa's Community Redevelopment Agency approved a million-dollar restoration agreement on August 20. At that meeting City Councilman Bill Carlson warned that the house could fall down anytime. The agreement includes reimbursement toward construction costs and financial goals the foundation must meet. Restoration is estimated at $4 million to $6 million, with construction expected to take 18 to 24 months once under way, and the foundation and city staff were scheduled to brief the CRA again that week. Parts of the Zack Street house had collapsed before, leading to emergency repairs.