NORWAY – Just as a lack of funding threatens the future of the Norway Opera House, the same can be said for the state’s remaining grange halls, which are being lost at a rate of three to four a year, officials at Maine Preservation say.

That’s why Maine Preservation’s 2003 list of Maine’s Most Endangered Historic Properties not only includes individual historic buildings like the Opera House and four other buildings, it also includes the 187 remaining grange halls in the state, said Roxanne Eflin, the nonprofit preservation organization’s executive director.

The nomination was inspired by Louise Beaulieu of the Monticello Grange on Route 1 in Aroostook County. Beaulieu was on hand for Thursday’s press conference in Norway, which also named the Sheepscot Village Historic District as among Maine’s most endangered.

“It’s been the center of our community for the last 100 years,” Beaulieu said. Built in 1921, its future, like so many other granges, is threatened with lack of funding for needed repairs.

The Lovell Brick Church, built in 1850, also made the list. Its congregation is devoted to the building, but can no longer afford the maintenance. They are considering selling the building to preservation-minded people.

A state Department of Transportation bridge replacement plan threatens to forever spoil the unchanged nature of Sheepscot Village, whose history stretches back thousands of years. Maine Preservation officials say the village is considered one of the few places in the United States that appears almost exactly as it did 100 years ago.

The Sea Urchins cottage, located in Bar Harbor on the campus of the College of the Atlantic, made the list because it is one of the few remaining large summer cottages that was spared from a devastating 1947 fire. Currently, however, the college’s master plan calls for its removal for redevelopment with modern student housing.

The District 5 Schoolhouse in North Alfred, built in 1872, made the list because it is the last district school in Alfred on its original site, and is threatened from the rear by a coming residential development. The local historic society wants to convert it to a schoolhouse museum.

Also on the 2003 most endangered list is the Colcord House in South Berwick, slated for demolition to make way for a new medical facility of York Hospital. It is located just outside the local historic district, and therefore not protected by the town’s preservation ordinance.

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