NORWAY — The Norway Landmarks Preservation Society has sent out an appeal for financial help as they start Phase II of an ambitious project to rehabilitate and renovate the historic Gingerbread House.
“We have just sent out our annual appeal, a card with a sample of the kitchen wallpaper from the 1920s as its cover,” said Joan Beal, a member of the Board of Directors. “Documentation of the remaining wallpaper in all the rooms of the Gingerbread House has been one of our recent projects.”
Two years ago, the 1851 house was moved by James G. Merry Building Movers of Scarborough from its original site behind the Advertiser-Democrat building at Pikes Hill and Main Street to its present location 950 feet up Main Street.
The Norway Landmarks Preservation Society, doing business as Friends of the Gingerbread House, has been raising money for several years to rehabilitate the 19th-century building.
A 33-page preservation plan for the Gingerbread House had been developed by Margaret Gaertner of the firm Barba & Wheelock Architecture in Portland. It includes a three-phase, sequenced plan for preservation and repair of the building.
During the summer, the group exposed the clapboard siding as part of the completion of Phase I. That phase began with the moving of the building and ended with the construction of new chimneys that match the original ones.
Beal said the board has estimated it will cost about $15,000 to launch Phase II. This phase includes repairing and replacing the roof, securing the exterior envelope, restoring the original windows through educational workshops that will bring in volunteers, restore and paint clapboards, and trim and restore the original doors.
The group has applied for grants and has been raising money through its Buy-A-Bundle Campaign, which has garnered $7,000 of its original $10,000 goal to replace the roof.
C’s Inc., a real estate holding company affiliated with Sun Media Group, publishers of the Sun Journal and Advertiser-Democrat, agreed in late 2008 to delay demolition of the building if anyone could figure out a way to move the massive house. The Friends of the Gingerbread House, a volunteer group, banded together to save the landmark building.
Originally known as the Evans-Cummings House, it has graced the entrance to Norway from the north since 1851. It is more commonly known as the Gingerbread House for its elaborate trim, added in a late-19th-century renovation.
ldixon@sunjournal.com
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- This circa-1920s wallpaper sample was found in the first-floor kitchen of the historic Gingerbread House.
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