“If you’re over the age of 50 and from Bed-Stuy, Dr. English either delivered you or she was your doctor,” is something Karyn Wyche, a longtime resident of Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, heard often at Stuyvesant Mansion.

Dr. Josephine English moved to Brooklyn in 1956, where she became the first Black female obstetrician licensed in New York to open a private practice. She delivered all six of Malcolm X and Betty Shabazz’s daughters and an estimated 6,000 babies throughout her career. Along the way she also accrued a significant amount of real estate — over a dozen buildings — with the goal of establishing medical centers, clinics and places for the community to gather.

Only two of those buildings remain in the family’s possession today: “The Paul Robeson Theatre” in Fort Greene and Stuyvesant Mansion in Stuyvesant Heights. Now, both buildings have been listed in a court-ordered sale.

The theater on 40 Greene Avenue, housed in a striking Rundbogenstil-style church from 1864, has sat dormant for over a decade, but its rounded motifs, peeling facade and blue-gold sign have long inspired neighborhood curiosity.

The building was constructed in 1864 as a Unitarian Universalist church. After Dr. English bought it in 1980, she repurposed the building as a theater to expand local access to the arts and named it after Paul Leroy Robeson, the Black cultural icon and activist. The theater was mainly used for small productions, fund-raisers and various community events.

Stuyvesant Mansion, the other building up for sale, was Dr. English’s residence and private medical practice. But after her death in 2011, it became a thriving community hub, serving as a senior center and space for after-school programs. It was also a venue for public forums with local leaders and guest speakers, including former political prisoners and members of the Black Panther Party. It became affectionately known as “The People’s Mansion.”

“The mansion and Dr. English are connected to the legacy of Black people in Bed-Stuy and to The Great Migration,” said Monique Scott, founder and director of Freebrook Academy, a free private school formerly based in the mansion. “And in a space like that, when you walk in, you are faced with history, as opposed to needing to be reminded of it or learning about it in a book or documentary down the line.”

Ms. Scott and other community organizers now fear that with both buildings up for sale, Dr. English’s legacy will be lost. “Too many Black institutions are disappearing because of the erasure of Black spaces,” she said.

The properties were listed on April 1 as a “two-property legacy portfolio” by Anthony T Crews Real Estate, but the fate of the two buildings has been unclear for several years. Before the court-ordered sale, Dr. English’s estate had been in dispute among her heirs since at least 2020, according to court documents. Barry Sheppard, one of Dr. English’s sons and the estate’s executor declined to comment.

The combined listing is offered at $8.25 million — $5.25 million for the mansion and $3 million for the theater. The properties are available as either a package or individually.

About five months before the buildings were listed, the local organizations that had been using Stuyvesant Mansion — Brooklyn Movement Center, Freebrook Academy and GrowHouse Design and Development Group — were asked to leave the building. The eviction set off a grass-roots movement to raise funds to buy the mansion and place it in a community-governed land trust. The campaign states that if the organizers succeed, they will continue using the building as a center for the arts, wellness, small business incubation, intergenerational programs and cultural memory “in the spirit of Dr. Josephine English.”

According to an interview with the Brooklyn Historical Society in 2008, Dr. English wanted to use her various properties to give Black people in Brooklyn spaces where they could thrive, gather and receive dignified health care. One of the first properties she bought was a building in Bushwick in 1957, which she converted into a women’s health clinic. “She was always working for the community, coming home late,” said John Sheppard, Dr. English’s eldest son. “She would tell people to not worry and pay what they could. She was a sweet woman. She spent thousands, if not millions, of her own money on Black people.”

Shanna Sabio, co-founder and executive director at GrowHouse NYC, one of the organizations formerly based out of Stuyvesant Mansion, helped create the BLAC Land Trust to safeguard historic Black-owned properties, like Stuyvesant Mansion, and protect them from developers. Community land trusts are nonprofit organizations that can buy land, with or without a building, and give communities control over its development and management.

The group has its work cut out for it. So far, their crowdsourcing campaign has raised around $6,000 of the $50,000 they’re seeking to help cover legal fees and other costs related to their search for funders or donors who could help acquire the building at the listing price, or fair value. “We have a few potential angles for acquiring the properties for community use, like contributing to a down payment,” said Ms. Wyche, who attended Freebrook Academy and is now one of the campaign organizers. But the main approach is to find a donor, and organizers say they have a few promising leads.

Adding to the complexity, in December 2025 the developer Pinestone Greene LLC filed a suit claiming a prior legal right to 375 Stuyvesant Avenue.

The developer claims that Barry Sheppard entered into a legal agreement with Pinestone Greene to develop 40 Greene Avenue and 375 Stuyvesant Avenue in 2017. According to recent court documents, a hearing for this case has been scheduled for May 21, essentially delaying the possibility of a sale. (The attorneys representing Pinestone Greene declined to comment.)

And there’s the added expense of upkeep. Both buildings are protected by strict preservation rules: The mansion is in a designated historic district — Stuyvesant Heights Historic District — and the theater is an individual landmark. The listing for the theater makes it clear that’s in need of an extensive restoration, as the structure is currently in “decaying condition.”

“The cost to renovate it, whether it’s residential, cultural or commercial is going to be significantly more than the acquisition cost,” said Paul Murphy, a real estate agent familiar with historic restorations.

The ongoing lawsuit filed by Pinestone Greene LLC has unintentionally given GrowHouse and the community an extended window of time to gather the potential funds to acquire the mansion.

Beyond saving this specific location, Ms. Sabio is hopeful that if the campaign is successful, it could serve as an example of how other groups could use community land trusts to keep buildings from getting scooped up by developers. “With Bed-Stuy being ground zero in a lot of ways for Brooklyn’s gentrification, it would be amazing to at least have this win in the neighborhood,” she said.

Kirsten Noyes and Susan Beachy contributed research.