The heart of Olde Hampton beats again with the opening of the new Mary W. Jackson Neighborhood Center. The 12,500-square-foot facility features multipurpose and meeting spaces, a catering kitchen, an indoor basketball court, activity rooms for classes, a small fitness center, and covered porches. The center serves not only youth but also a growing aging population. Outdoor amenities include a soccer field, a basketball court, a future playground, and picnic shelters.
The City named the center the Mary W. Jackson Neighborhood Center in 2018. Mary W. Jackson, the first African American female engineer and mathematician at NASA, was a longtime Olde Hampton resident and a direct influence on countless young people who grew up there.
This historic neighborhood — bounded by Settler’s Landing Road, Armistead Boulevard, West Pembroke Avenue, and LaSalle Avenue — grew out of the Contraband Camps, established by formerly enslaved people who sought refuge with the Union Army during the Civil War. The Army refused to return them to their Confederate enslavers, defining them as “contraband of war.” The camp became the first self-contained Black community in the United States, where residents started businesses and families. A deep sense of history and pride in this contraband heritage remains today.
Now, a larger transformation is underway to reconnect the Olde Hampton community. A proposed urban plan centered around the new neighborhood center restores a historic street and reconfigures the road that once ran through the middle of Grant Park. The plan also envisions low-cost housing to help jumpstart reinvestment by Olde Hampton residents. This study and plan were developed by WPA and Ray Gindroz.
