Eagles: Baseball Hall of Famer Reggie Jackson’s abandoned childhood home in Wyncote will be demolished beginning Monday, April 14, to make way for a parking lot that will serve a neighboring gym and co-working space, Cheltenham Township officials said.
Jackson, who won five World Series rings during his 21-year career, grew up in the two-story home at 149 Greenwood Ave. during the 1950s and 1960s. His father, Martinez Jackson, ran a tailor shop on the first floor. The ivy-covered property, built in 1900, was last used by an insurance agency in the 1970s and has been abandoned for decades.
“There’s really nothing left of the house from when Reggie lived there,” said Matt Sigel, whose co-working firm, Station Partners, owns the property.
Cheltenham Township gave final approval for the building’s demolition and the plan to build a parking lot last summer. Township commissioner Ann Rappoport, whose ward covers the site of the house, said Jackson was not interested in preserving the property and there was no outside interest in attempting to relocate it. The township’s historical commission is working with Station Partners and Jackson on plans to place a historical plaque at the site.
“I’ve talked to Reggie a dozen-plus times, and he’s said to me specifically that he does have very fond memories of growing up there and the area,” Sigel said.
Jackson was a four-sport athlete at Cheltenham High School, where he pinned his hopes on an athletic career to avoid working at the tailor shop after school. His father, a pilot during World War II, played baseball in the Negro Leagues and used his earnings to open up multiple tailor shops in Philadelphia and the suburbs. He raised Reggie and two other children as a single dad at the home in Wyncote. He also tried to run a bootleg whiskey business out of the property in the 1960s, a gambit that landed him in prison for six months.
Reggie Jackson, 78, earned the nickname “Mr. October” for his clutch hitting during World Series appearances with the Oakland Athletics and New York Yankees in the 1970s. Jackson was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1993.
The demolition of the home in Wyncote is expected to take about one week. Construction of the parking lot will begin in early May and take another eight weeks to finish. In addition to serving Station Partners’ iThrive co-working office, the parking lot will be used by patrons of the Elite ID Fitness gym housed in the same building.
Sigel said he hopes to have the historical plaque for Jackson placed on the property some time this summer.