ELLSWORTH — Around 60 people gathered on the sprawling grounds at the Woodlawn Museum on July 14 to celebrate the start of a construction project more than 10 years in the making.
Work on the Community Barn, a multipurpose event space and historical center, began in late June. Todd Little-Seibold, president of the Hancock County Trustees of Public Reservations, Woodlawn’s governing board, expressed his enthusiasm for the opportunities this project will provide for the museum and the Ellsworth community at large.
“This is a five-plus-million-dollar investment in our community,” said Little-Seibold, “and it represents the linchpin of a number of projects aimed at turning the museum into a year-round recreational facility. We’ll be able to host events, teach classes and basically be a resource for the community all year long.”
The structure also will house the future Center for Downeast History and provide a specialized space to organize and store the vast historical archive possessed by the museum.
“For me, as a professor, it’s the educational opportunities that are most exciting. I can’t wait to have fifth- and sixth-graders up here learning about things like the history of apples,” said Little-Seibold, who teaches at College of the Atlantic.
At the time of the event, a single section of the foundation still remained to be dug out. Since then Robert Shea, whose forebears worked on the original barn behind the Black House, and his crew laid the entire foundation and began work on an elevator shaft.
Little-Seibold says the museum hopes to have the Community Barn up and running by next summer.
Zachary Lanning
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