Save The Magnolia Tree: Electeds Rally Behind Bed-Stuy Earth Center

BED-STUY, NY — The story of the Magnolia Tree Earth Center is one of determination and perseverance — and on Wednesday, electeds and community members rallied together to help the Bed-Stuy hub continue its legacy facing facade damage.

"It's time to rally," said Bed-Stuy resident Gbenga Akinnagbe.

Some 50 years after the center's founding across from Herbert Von King Park, organizers are staring down $350,000-worth of facade damage.

On Wednesday, Borough President Antonio Reynoso brought the center one step closer to its goal with a promised $20,000 donation.

"Currently, the deteriorating state of the center’s façade poses a risk to public safety. Without securing the funding soon, [the center] could risk losing the buildings," said Crystal Jeffrey, a representative of the center, on a GoFundMe campaign.

By Wednesday, another $52,000 had been crowdfunded on GoFundMe to save the center, created to preserve a 40-foot-tall and 140-year-old Magnolia grandiflora tree — a species not commonly found in the area, according to the center and Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso.

The $20,000 price-point is somewhat of a symbolic donation — in the 1970s, Carthan had said it would cost $20,000 to build a wall to protect the Magnolia from harsh New York elements, according to Reynoso's office.

In an area facing rapid gentrification, the center's preservation couldn't be more important, Jeffrey said.

"In a historically Black community facing upheaval from gentrification, cost of living increases, and other threats, [the center] represents a Black-founded, -owned, and -led institution whose mission is rooted in social justice, self-determination, and land ownership by and for the Bed-Stuy community," Jeffrey wrote on the GoFundMe.

The story of the Magnolia Tree Earth Center is one of community preservation. In 1972, boundary-breaking environmentalist Hattie Carthan took on developers who wanted to tear down her beloved, and rare, Magnolia tree.

Two Bed-Stuy brownstones would come down with it. Carthan rallied the community to landmark the tree and brownstones, raising funds to found the earth center.

"Using our tree as a symbol, we're struggling and intend to establish and earth center for nature studies" Carthan said in an old video about the center's founding.

The center was incorporated in 1973 and has since held cultural, educational and environmental events for the community.

“This isn’t just about Hattie’s legacy of environmentalism, it’s also about what drove her advocacy: community power, nature as a force for the education of our young people, and our right to breathe clean air, find solace on a hot summer day, and walk streets lined with the same beauty that sits in the soul of Brooklyn," Reynoso said.