Editor’s Note: This story is an excerpt from WBUR’s weekly arts and culture newsletter, The ARTery. If you like what you read and want it in your inbox, sign up here.
A new arts facility is coming to Boston in 2027. Castle of Our Skins, an arts institution that celebrates and aims to generate curiosity in Black music, cut the ribbon on Thursday, Dec. 5, at its new location at 566 Columbus Ave. in Lower Roxbury/South End. The 2,491-square-foot space, which will be called Gold Hall, will function as a performance and community space for the organization.
Castle of Our Skins was co-founded in 2013 by violist Ashleigh Gordon and pianist/composer Anthony R. Green. Both attended the New England Conservatory of Music and connected over their love of classical music. But they found that centuries of contributions of Black artists to the genre were often overlooked or ignored.
“Cultivating a genuine sense of appreciation, love, respect and celebration of Black culture, history and artistry are foundationally why we do what we do,” said Gordon, now the artistic director of the organization. “That felt relevant in 2013 and feels even more important in a deeply divided country of today.”
Over the past 11 years, the organization has programmed countless performances, concerts and education workshops that highlight Black artistry.
Around 2020, organization leadership decided it was time for the next step. “Over the past four years, we’ve been working to find a permanent space,” executive director Ciyadh Wells said. To secure the space, they worked closely with the Mayor’s Office of Arts & Culture and the City of Boston’s Planning Department.
Space is notoriously expensive and hard to come by in Boston, and Wells said they’re looking forward to having a place to foster the arts in the city. “It’s a place not only where we’ll practice, but it is also a place where we’ll serve our community through our artistry,” said Wells. “We want our spaces to be comfortable, where people feel drawn to return again and again to experience new things.”
There’s an additional layer of significance to the location – it’s the site where the Harriet Tubman House once stood, a community space that was demolished in 2020 to the chagrin of local residents.
For Kelley Hollis, the digital media and marketing manager of Castle of Our Skins, this spatial context is important. It’s directly in the heart of Lower Roxbury/South End, a historic artery of Black culture. Black-run music spaces have called the area home, like Wally’s Cafe Jazz Club and the Hi-Hat, which hosted a number of popular bands in the late 1940s and ’50s before a fire closed its doors in 1959.
Many residents were worried the Harriet Tubman House site would be turned into a space that wouldn’t represent or serve people in the area. At the time of the demolition, activist and artist Keith Jones said, “We’ve seen a complete transformation of the South End than when we were there.” He and his family moved to the neighborhood in the early 1980s. He said the Harriet Tubman House had been “a place to go if you wanted to know history.”
It seems fitting that Castle of Our Skins, an organization dedicated to highlighting “unsung and celebrated figures of past and present,” will be the ones to settle down at the location. “We’ve never had a place to truly call our own,” Hollis said. “This new space gives us stability. It’s not just a venue; it’s a home for artists, educators and the community to gather, create and share.”
Gold Hall is slated to open in 2027. Castle of Our Skins will soon launch a capital campaign to continue the work of designing and building out the space. Organization leaders say they plan to intentionally involve Lower Roxbury/South End community members in the process.
“Being [at Gold Hall] allows us to stay connected to the people and cultures that inspire and shape our work,” Hollis said. “To now have the opportunity to create a space that continues that legacy — through art, education, and connection — is a responsibility we take very seriously.”
