Groundsite Image Gallery
Mary and James Reed home site
Artist: Hughes, Langston
Height: 0.000"
Width: 0.000"
Mary and James Reed home site, 731 New York St.
Langston Hughes and his grandmother lived at this site occasionally, in a former house, and when his grandmother died, he moved back with the Reeds. Hughes’s grandmother Mary Langston is listed at this address as a boarder in the 1908-09 and 1913-14 city directories.
The Reeds appear in city directories at this address from 1905 to 1923. James Wilson Reed worked as a laborer and as a sewer man for Kennedy Plumbing Co. Hughes remembered, Uncle Reed dug ditches and laid sewer pipes for the city, and Auntie Reed sold milk and eggs to her neighbors (Big Sea 18).
After James Reed died, Walter Campbell lived here, according to the city directory (1925-26), and he married Mary Reed, who owned this house (Rampersad V.1, 234). In March of 1932, his first visit to Lawrence since leaving in 1915, Hughes stayed with the Campbells at this site.