Photo / COURTESY, FRANCES PERKINS CENTER
In this historical photo, Perkins talks with workers.
Updated: June 17, 2024
$750K grant to historic Newcastle homestead will support staffing and more
Photo / COURTESY, FRANCES PERKINS CENTER
The Frances Perkins Center was awarded a $750,000 grant to advance its mission of historic preservation and enhance educational programming.
The Frances Perkins Center, steward of the Frances Perkins Homestead National Landmark in Newcastle, has been awarded a $750,000 grant to advance the center's mission of historic preservation and enhance educational programming.
The money, to be distributed over three years, comes from the Mellon Foundation, one of the nation's largest funders of the arts and humanities.
The center was the first organization in Maine to receive funds from the grant program, which “supports a fuller, more complex telling of American histories and lived experiences by deepening the range of how and where our stories are told and by bringing a wider variety of voices into the public dialogue,” according to the foundation’s Humanities in Place webpage.
The center, which is based at the Newcastle landmark property, aims to shine a light on Frances Perkins, who served as Secretary of Labor from 1933-45. She was the first woman to hold a U.S. Cabinet position and a driving force behind the New Deal.
“The Mellon Foundation’s support is a transformative catalyst for the Frances Perkins Center,” said its executive director, Giovanna Gray Lockhart. “It elevates us from a volunteer-led, emerging organization to a leader in local, regional and national education and dialogue on American heritage, culture, social justice and economic security.”
The grant will fund two studies and support the hiring of five staff members, with the goal of creating a “place-based” history and education center at the homestead.
As recommended by the Maine State Historic Preservation Commission, the two studies will be a cultural landscape report and a historic structures report, which together will provide information to guide the interpretation and preservation of the homestead.
The five hires will be a part-time archivist, full-time curator and three new full-time positions: a planned giving/major gifts officer, a database administrator and a membership manager.
The Frances Perkins Homestead National Historic Landmark has been owned and managed by the center since 2020. It includes 57 acres of woods and fields along the Damariscotta River and an 1837 brick house that’s listed in the National Register of Historic Places and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2014. The homestead was settled by the Perkins family in the mid-18th century.
Last year saw the completion of a $3.5 million capital campaign and historic preservation project designed to save the farmhouse and other structures from deterioration.
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