A new documentary will soon tell the whole country about 'The House on Jonathan Street'

In the fall of 2018, a police cruiser crashed into a small home at 417 Jonathan St., damaging the cabin severely enough to displace its owner and leave the property condemned.

Joel Merrbaugh, then-owner of Allegany Wrecking & Salvage, and his son Josh, who had been hired to demolish the structure, quickly realized the home was built using 18th-century construction methods.

They alerted the Western Maryland Community Development Corp., which was involved in other community development projects in the neighborhood. Soon, Preservation Maryland had purchased the home from its owner, Richard Davis, and archeologists from the Maryland Department of Transportation State Highway Administration were unearthing its history. They estimated the home to be approximately 180 years old.

Its story is now being told in “The House on Jonathan Street,” a new, locally produced documentary that highlights the rehabilitation of hte historic log cabin in one of Hagerstown’s oldest Black neighborhoods. It will premiere Feb. 3 on PBS stations nationwide, and a local screening is also scheduled for 3 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 18 at the Maryland Theatre in downtown Hagerstown.

The nearly hour-long film touches on the archeology and rehabilitation of the cabin, but “it’s not a 'This Old House' type of documentary,” said Russ Hodge, co-executive producer. Instead, it places what happened on Jonathan Street into a larger historical framework.

“It’s 300 years of history in a 50-minute documentary,” he explained.

Hodge, his wife Cynthia Scott, and their son Patrick Hodge run 3 Roads Communications, based in Frederick, Md. This will be the third documentary by the Emmy Award-winning firm that PBS has aired to a national audience.

“The vast majority of people who will watch this have never heard of Hagerstown,” Hodge said. “So we place it in context, including why they should care what happened in this little industrial city in the middle of Maryland.

“Hagerstown wound up becoming, I don't want to say a metaphor for other Rust Belt towns and cities around America, but certainly an example. Pretty much every place had a Jonathan Street.”

Although Hagerstown began as a farming town, it started to flourish in the 1870s when the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad brought new prosperity. Segregation laws restricted where Black residents could live after the Civil War, resulting in a Black community settling along Jonathan Street.

The area was once full of locally owned businesses, with several listed in the Negro Motorist Green Book — a compilation of safe places for Black travelers in segregated America.

But at the time the cabin was discovered, Jonathan Street was one of the poorest areas of the city.

3 Roads Communications began to document the project after Hodge saw an article about the cabin in The Washington Post. Later that same day, he and Patrick, the documentary’s director, met with WMCDC representatives Reggie Turner and Tereance Moore.

“We talked and, right away, I determined that there was a great story there,” Russ Hodge said.

3 Roads’ goal was to use the house as a lens to document the rise and fall of Black communities in small Rust Belt towns and cities across America, and how the cabin's discovery, renovation and renewal could portend a change in the fortunes of the street and the larger community.

Filming began in 2020 and a final cut of the documentary was completed in December. More than 40 people were interviewed on camera, including the archaeologists who completed the dig, historians, journalists, elected officials and former Jonathan Street residents.

Soundbites of these interviews are layered over B-roll footage and historic photographs to craft a compelling story that has been enthusiastically received by PBS networks.

Soon, PBS will share the story across the country

More than 300 stations will air the documentary starting Feb. 3, including 19 of the top 20 markets. Local airings include WHUT on Feb. 4-5, MPT on March 25, and WETA on April 4 and 6.

Both Hodges believe the documentary will resonate with people across the nation, because history has a powerful human impact.

“One of the things we did was to show how national events impacted Hagerstown and then how people on Jonathan Street were impacted,” Russ Hodge said. “So Brown vs. Board of Education, we talk about the national implications there, but then how it was handled in Hagerstown, and then how it impacted the Jonathan Street kids who went to the North Street School.

“We do the same with redlining. We have a national expert explain what redlining meant nationally. And then Tereance Moore explains what it meant on Jonathan Street, what it meant to the housing values there, and why the neighborhood deteriorated over time. By providing that human level, it really helps people understand.”

By bringing this story to national audiences, the Hodges hope to inspire similar projects in other communities. Since the renovation wrapped and the home was sold to a private owner, property values in the neighborhood have increased and investments are flowing into the community.

“I think our greatest ability is to be able to tell a story to an audience on terms that they can understand. And we like to say we specialize in programs where ordinary people do extraordinary things,” Hodge said.

“At the end of the day, 'The House on Jonathan Street' really does celebrate ordinary people. The people who live there, the people who did all the work, the people who lived in the community. And frankly, the ordinary people who stepped in to make sure that this house was preserved for future generations.”

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This article originally appeared on The Herald-Mail: Documentary tells the story of a historic Jonathan Street cabin