GARDINER — The Gardiner Library Association and Gardiner Public Library have been awarded a $3,500 grant from the Maine Bicentennial Commission to conduct an inventory of buildings dating to 1820 in the library’s service area of Gardiner, West Gardiner, Pittston, Randolph, Farmingdale and Litchfield.
The grant will be matched by a $3,500 contribution from the association and the library.
The association and library will use the money to compile an inventory of the built environment in 1820 in the six communities, with a particular focus on residential, farm, commercial, religious and public buildings that exist today. The project also will identify buildings from that period that no longer exist, but for which there are available photographs, drawings, paintings or textual descriptions. Roughly 50 to 75 properties are expected to be included in the inventory. In addition, to the extent possible, the project will inventory roads, cemeteries, dams and other built structures.
Volunteers, including area high school students, under the direction of Library Director Anne Davis and archivist Dawn Thistle, will undertake the project.
Davis said, “Our great hope is to create an interest in local history and social history with the next generation of leaders.”
Anyone, student or non-student, who wishes to work on the project may contact Davis at the library.
“There’s an immediate need to simply identify those structures built on or before 1820,” said Tom Farkas, of Pittston, president of the Gardiner Library Association. “We’ve already identified about 40 structures. We’re sure there are others unknown to us. Anyone with knowledge of such buildings, please let us know.”
After information is collected and summarized on a specific property, it will be included on the library’s website (www.gpl.lib.me.us) on a page dedicated to the project. History of the area in 1820 also will be shared through the website.
Displays will also be made and exhibited in the library and other locations throughout the six communities, including in schools and historical societies, that will be updated as more properties are added. The final product will be the completed inventory in a physical volume that will be copied for distribution to each of the participating communities and their historical committees or, in the case of Gardiner, its library.
“This is a really exciting project,” Farkas said. “It’s an opportunity to further develop volunteer and institutional capacity in all six communities in the area of historical research and public education. It’s great to see the library and the school system working together to provide research and writing opportunities for high school students.”
