Sherman Jones: A Tireless Fighter for Ft. Greene

Little bigger than a "minute man," Sherman Jones clocked countless hours for his beloved Fort Greene. With his mischievous grin, he charmed the britches off many, including civil authoritarians who wanted just to say "no."  

For example, after 1973 when he and his devoted friend of 30 years, Fred Lasker, moved here from Manhattan, he linked elbows with his neighbors to force city fathers to reclaim Fort Greene from its perception as a "slum" into its birthright as a full-fledged Historic District. That deserved victory came from the City Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1978.

People in his South Portland block association came to call him their "Mayor," especially when they billowed their bellies and jollies at his home during pot luck dinners for the Fort Greene cause. Despite our hood's droopy-drawer casualness, Jones was invariably dress-shirted and bow-tied.

During the formative years spent fighting for the Fort Greene Historic Designation, Washington Park stalwart led a group that came to be known as the Fort Greene Landmarks Preservation Committee. Jones served most ably for a number of years as its secretary. In 1994, the year of his death at the age of 50, that committee was rejuvenated as a federally recognized non-profit entity named the Fort Greene Association.

Earlier, Jones had initiated a cash register revival for new businesses to reinvigorate Fort Greene, whereas before there was but perhaps a solitary restaurant, Cino's, on DeKalb Avenue. Otherwise, it was a commercial purgatory that today's see-and-be-seen residents, now Twittering about so many bistros and boutiques, assuredly cannot perceive. 

Jones, albeit prematurely for that dismal epoch, even opened a shop for epicurean cheeses and fine foods, cold-sepulchered at night in a walk-in cooler. He called the shop "Fowler Square," at Fulton Street near South Elliott Place, across from heroic , where the delectable Deniz Turkish restaurant now operates. Jones encouraged and trained several of his employees whom other businesses might have rejected. Regrettably, his shop endured for only four years because the "Hood" still hadn't realized the genetic potential it has today.

Yet, as Mrs. Ruth Goldstein, one of Jones' South Portland neighbors, has said: "Sherman Jones' Fort Greene spirit and range are long remembered by the lyrics he scripted for Cole Porter's 1936 hit ‘It's Delightful, It's De-Lovely.’ We all sang at his home, 'It's De-Brownstones.'"