FREEDOM — Keen Hall will get a second life as a community center now that the Freedom Community Historical Society has been awarded funding for renovations.

The $327,000 grant, from the Historic Preservation Fund through the National Park Service, will support the building’s restoration and turn it into a community center that will house archival collections and host displays, exhibits and events, with plans to finish the project by the end of the year.

Keen Hall perches on a hill overlooking Route 137, off part of Main Street known as the old village. At the back entrance, a banner urging the community to “help restore Keen Hall” hangs next to a sliding barn door, which opens into a skeletal two-story residence outfitted with original wooden beams and remnants of horsehair plaster, a thick wall finish used before drywall became popular around World War II.

Signs designate which rooms will be repurposed for community use, archives and library space. All rooms will be furnished after the building’s original design, said Wilson G. Hess, a historian on the historical society’s board of directors.

An aged banister with a lath and plaster wall behind it is seen Thursday in the historic Keen Hall in Freedom. The building, which is listed as one of Maine’s most endangered historic places, was acquired by the Freedom Community Historical Society in 2015, with the intent to create a headquarters for itself, along with a community center. Rich Abrahamson/Morning Sentinel

The 1850s residence was the family home of Carter B. Keen, who went on to become the first director of the Division of Postal Savings of the U.S. Postal Service, creating what is now known as the money order.

In 1926, Keen donated the building as a headmaster’s residence to Freedom Academy, one of the first secondary schools created in the area after Maine’s 1820 constitution required towns to offer their own public education.

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Just a few years after it was donated, plans for what would become Route 137 marked Keen Hall in the direct path of the future highway.

Keen had the building lifted and moved back from the highway. This resulted in an unstable foundation that would deteriorate over the next century, but it kept Keen Hall standing — even when the rest of Freedom Academy’s campus burned down and the school closed in 1958.

Keen Hall was listed as one of “Maine’s Most Endangered Historic Places” by Maine Preservation in 2015. It is also on the National Register of Historic Places.

Keen Hall sits on a hill along Route 137 in Freedom, near a part of the town known as Old Village. Rich Abrahamson/Morning Sentinel

With Keen Hall at a risk of collapse, the Freedom Community Historical Society acquired the building in 2015. The nonprofit group, led by late director Myrick Cross, replaced the structure’s foundation and frame — essentially giving it new bones, Hess said.

“They were able to acquire some support to begin work on the house, and to create a provision that it would be a community gathering place as well as headquarters for the historical society,” Hess said. “They jacked it up in the air 12 feet and had a new foundation put under it, and were going along every year, getting $10,000-$15,000 a year to bring it to snuff.”

But it wasn’t enough to fully renovate the building. When Cross’ health took a turn for the worse two years ago, Hess said, it was time to ramp things up.

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“We were looking at what we could do to move the project along,” Hess said. “And I said, ‘You know what? I’m going to swing for the fences.'”

The grant, awarded last year but announced Jan. 8, was made possible through congressionally directed spending from U.S. Sens. Susan Collins and Angus King of Maine.

The funding supports the full restoration of Keen Hall, including restoring the exterior to the style of the headmaster’s residence, finishing the interior and adding insulation and heating. The historical society will start looking at contractors this month, with plans to begin work in March and wrap up by year’s end, Hess said.

This kind of restoration project drives economic growth in the state, said Tara Kelly, executive director of Maine Preservation.

“It is something that is so important to the future of Maine, and it is something that is so drastically underfunded by comparison to its level of importance,” Kelly said. “Preservation provides jobs — it relates not just to the construction trade, but to tourism. And so a public or private investment in the past is really important to an ongoing investment in Maine.”

In addition to Keen Hall, sites like the restored 1853 Old Town Meeting House and the Mill at Freedom Falls contribute to the town’s rich history. Saving old buildings is better for the environment, said Tony Grassi, volunteer conservationist who rehabilitated the mill.

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“I would much rather save an old building than build a new building,” Grassi said. “They were built better, they last longer, and they don’t use as many materials as if you scrape it all off and build something brand new. And so from a strictly environmental point of view, it makes a lot more sense to preserve what you have than just throw it out.”

A sign at Keen Hall in Freedom indicates the future use of a room once renovations of the building are completed. Thanks to a grant from the National Park Service, the project may be finished by the end of the year. Rich Abrahamson/Morning Sentinel

Cross died last year. The group holds fast to his vision for the community center, which will be one of the only public spaces for residents of Freedom to convene.

“It’s a lack that our community has, quite frankly,” Hess said. “A gathering place where folks come in, have a cup of coffee, play some cards, have a knitting society. There are only 710 of us, but it helps to have something like that, and to have it be in the old village, we think, is the most appropriate.”

Today, members of the historical society remember their own time at Freedom Academy. One board member grew up next door to Keen Hall, and another lived there while his father was headmaster.

“It is one of the last remaining structures in this part of the state that has anything to do with that era of small towns having their own schools and high schools,” Hess said.

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