Marjorie Rupert-Mumma, the Lancaster Habitat affiliate’s first executive director, likes to say that she used to run Habitat from the trunk of her car.
“I traveled with a box of brochures, a slide projector and a screen,” says Rupert-Mumma. “And I started going to churches and service groups all around Lancaster County.”
In fact, there was no official office during the first few years of the Lancaster Habitat’s existence. That changed in March of 1989, when the board floated the site of a former nuisance bar as a possible new Habitat construction project.
The bar was called the Wooden Nickel Tavern, and you can’t find an article written about the tavern that doesn’t include the phrase “den of iniquity.” The Wooden Nickel, located at 321 S. Queen St., was the site of numerous complaints, several police raids and was generally considered a blight on the neighborhood. In June of 1986, police arrested 26 people on several charges including cocaine distribution and possession of an Uzi automatic machine gun.
“The Wooden Nickel was located across the street from the first (Lancaster Habitat) house,” says Lancaster Habitat co-founder Mike Mumma. “It became available and we decided to buy that place and make it worthwhile. It gave us that visibility anybody is looking for to get an organization known, like ‘Look what they’re doing with the Wooden Nickel.’”
Initial plans called for up to seven units, but the final version included a first-floor Habitat office, a multi-use first-floor apartment and a condo-style second-floor apartment to house a Habitat family. The first workday at the Wooden Nickel took place on Saturday, April 7 and began with a ceremony with Habitat staff, families, supporters and the surrounding neighborhood.
Mumma recalls being moved during the groundbreaking ceremony by a performance by a local choir featuring a woman who later told her story about how, in her former life as a sex worker, she frequented the Wooden Nickel and had since changed the direction of her life.
The new Habitat office at the former site of the Wooden Nickel was dedicated on January 19, 1991, and the project was officially completed in September 1991. It was included in that year’s Parade of Homes. The Wooden Nickel build became a powerful symbol of the positive impact Habitat could make on a community.
Rupert-Mumma says people from the neighborhood regularly dropped into the new Habitat office just to say they appreciated what Habitat was doing for the neighborhood.
“Shortly after we moved into the offices, I got a piece of mail,” says Rupert Mumma. “It was a white envelope and inside was a little piece of cardboard and taped to it was 34 cents with a little note that said, ‘This is all I can do, but I wanted to do something.’”
Looking back on that time, Rupert-Mumma says transforming the Wooden Nickel from a dangerous bar into a beacon of hope was one of her proudest moments as executive director of Habitat.
“It was just amazing to turn that former brothel into our Habitat offices, and kind of clean up that corner of the neighborhood,” says Rupert-Mumma. “From the moment we crawled around in the rubble to the day it was dedicated and we moved in; it was just a great accomplishment. Not mine, but a community accomplishment.”