FAYETTE — The late-1870s building is too close to busy Route 17, and the corner boards show numerous holes made by woodpeckers. The back of the two-story hall houses a two-story outhouse, with a two-holer on each floor, fortunately long since replaced by flush toilets in bathrooms.

But the second floor of Starling Hall, formerly Starling Grange 156 in North Fayette, is a gem, and the Friends of Starling Hall are raising money to restore the hall it to its former glory.

The second floor features dark wooden, tongue-and-groove beadboard on the walls and ceiling, polished wooden floors and a stage with a restored screen featuring numerous businesses in Livermore Falls and one in Wilton.

Overhead, more than a dozen turnbuckle braces stretch from side to side, preventing the top plate from bowing out.

A description of Starling Hall in a news release from the Maine Historic Preservation Commission says the building “soon proved too small to adequately host events and it was subsequently enlarged in 1900.”

Maggie Chadwick, secretary of the Friends board, said, “As soon as they enlarged the building lengthwise and widthwise, it started to bow.” The turnbuckle solution was offered by a fiddle maker from North Mount Vernon, she said.

The large room is staged as if the Grange was meeting, with sashes of office draped over wooden chairs. Three braces are at one end, and the overseer and steward at the other.

Now a group of Friends is working to restore the building so it can function better as a community center and gathering place. The group began its efforts in earnest in August 2014, shortly after residents voted at Town Meeting to keep the hall rather than sell it.

“It’s a meaningful building to the people in this town,” Chadwick said. “Many people young and old have very fond memories of events here.”

She said certain things in particular keep her interested in the restoring the building.

“It never fails that several people come up to me and say, ‘I had my acting debut here when I was 5,’ or ‘My parents had their wedding reception here,'” she said.

Donna Barrett, vice president of the Friends board, said people recall the contradances, the plays, the eighth-grade graduations.

“It’s a building that’s full of memories for this town,” she said.

Over the past two years, the group succeeded in getting the building placed on the National Register of Historic Places and, with assistance from attorney Jed Davis, who lives in Fayette, adopted bylaws and became certified as a nonprofit organization.

Now the group is engaged in a campaign to raise funds for about $600,000 worth of work, with the initial job to be moving the entire 65-foot-by-35-foot structure about 20 feet farther away from the road. It will mean extending the cellar hole and likely filling in some of the 15-20 horse stalls contained there.

The building now stands in the right of way for Route 17, and snow and salt kicked up against the building have rotted the bottom of the front door, which is not used anyway because of the proximity to the road.

Relocating the building, which requires a permit from the town, also will allow room for a well to be drilled at the front of the building. The building has running water, but it is not potable, so drinking water is carried in.

BaselineES LLC, an engineering firm owned by a Fayette resident, is paying for the engineering work required for the move.

“Sometimes it just takes one person like that to give you a jump-start,” Barrett said.

A membership campaign is underway as well.

In the meantime, the building continues to be used for such things as community suppers; a Fayette Historical Society museum and society meetings; and, in summers, Fayette selectmen’s meetings. About 100 people attended the last public supper held two weeks ago, eating both inside and outside the building.

It also serves as the town’s polling site.

“It’s what this building is for, the community,” Barrett said. But it still retains the feel of yesteryear, with a hole cut onto the wall of one of the second floor anterooms where the Grange members could give the password that allowed entrance.

“The secretaries’ records are here from the 1800s,” Chadwick said.

In 1987, the town of Fayette acquired the building; and in June 2014, townspeople voted at Town Meeting to keep it.

A YouTube video, narrated by Joe Young, president of the Friends group, talks about the importance of the hall as the social center of the community.

The Friends’ next fundraiser, a 7-9 p.m. “Meet the Authors” (John Ford Sr. and Mark Nickerson, on tour in support of “Blue Lights and Funny Cider”) event is part of a daylong Fayette Friends & Family & Neighbors Day scheduled for July 16, also including a “Fireman’s BBQ,” a bake sale, a silent auction and a yard sale.

According to a 2015 annual report, the Friends group noted it had raised $6,000, half of that from various community events, and also supported other community organizations.

The money raised will be used to address the building’s structural problems and code deficiencies identified in an analysis by Ames Associates.

“While we do not know how much funding will be needed to complete renovations to the Hall it could easily exceed $500,000,” the report says. “We are already over 1 percent of the way towards that goal.”

The hall could be used for a wide range of community activities, “which may include promotion of the arts, educational seminars and workshops and other activities contributing to the benefit and well-being of Fayette and neighboring communities.”

At Town Meeting on Saturday, voters agreed to authorize selectmen to spend money from the Starling Hall Reserve account “to leverage other funding sources to support a multiphase structural improvement of Starling Hall” and to close the special revenue account for the building, depositing the proceeds into the 503(c) tax-exempt account labeled “Friends of Starling Hall.”

More information on the history of Starling Hall and efforts to restore it is on the town’s website at www.fayettemaine.org.

Betty Adams — 621-5631

badams@centralmaine.com

Twitter: @betadams

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