Blanchard House Museum in Punta Gorda expands to preserve Black history

PUNTA GORDA, Fla. —

The Blanchard House Museum in Punta Gorda, a place of healing and belonging, is expanding to include the Jean Cleveland House, enhancing its mission to preserve and share Black history.

Inside the museum, visitors find not only artifacts but also memories.

Martha Russell Bireda, the museum's director, described the museum as "very peaceful." For Bireda, the museum is a place of belonging and home, inspired by her mother, Bernice Russell.

"Then I look over at my mother, Bernice Russell, who’s ... this was her vision," Bireda said.

The Blanchard House has been open for 101 years and is now carried forward by Bireda and her son, Jaha Cummings, president of the Cultural Heritage Center of Southwest Florida.

"It embodies our story," Cummings said. "Punta Gorda has a unique sociology — a community founded on shared prosperity and mutual respect. Despite Florida having the strictest Jim Crow laws, the people here decided to come together and build something different."

The museum is expanding to include the Jean Cleveland House, another historic African American home, as the first Cultural Heritage Center in Florida. Inside, visitors will find exhibits that tell unheard stories, a multicultural restaurant, and a reimagined youth museum designed with the next generation in mind.

Bireda highlighted the importance of transmitting values and beliefs to young people.

"We stopped transmitting the values and the beliefs," she said. "We have to go back to that, and that's what we will be working with the young people. That's the way that you continue to make this town a beloved community."

The mission of the museum goes further, ensuring accessibility for all.

"I’m going to have audio to go along with the exhibit space here," Cummings said. "We also built a whole new ADA ramp."

For Bireda and Cummings, the museum is about more than history.

"This story is more important now than it probably has ever been," Bireda said.

They hope that everyone will walk through the museum's doors and see themselves in the story.

Renovations at the Cultural Heritage Center are nearly complete, with the team waiting on one final city permit. They are hoping to partially open by March or April.

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