Five Acres Preservation

The cabin in which African American poet, lyricist, and author James Weldon Johnson wrote in during the late 1920s and '30s on his property, Five Acres in Great Barrington, has not been renovated since its construction. The cabin has sustained heavy structural damage and the current property owners, Jill Rosenberg-Jones and Rufus Jones are working to raise money to restore the historic structure.

According to the Berkshire Eagle, the bed is disintegrating and there's a hole in the floor. The original windows have continued to break into bits over the years, and so now they're boarded up with Plexiglas. A tarp was installed on the roof.

But it wasn't always like this in the cabin on a hill next to the Alford Brook. In the 1920s and '30s, it was where civil rights giant, songwriter, and poet James Weldon Johnson wrote a collection of spiritual prose and sought peace and inspiration.