Homemade nightgowns are among the displays in the Franco Center in Lewiston. Two aisles on the main floor are lined with display cases, some of which contain clues for participants to advance through the escape room adventure. Andree Kehn/Sun Journal

LEWISTON — If you’re searching for the perfect place to unlock your inner Sherlock Holmes, or better yet Monsieur Lecoq, look no further than the escape room at the Franco Center at 46 Cedar St.

The hour-long Franco-themed game, which takes place in the lower part of the main performance hall of the historic building, was launched about three months ago by Franco Center Production Manager Jake Hodgkin. It’s been a hit with businesses, families, the old and the young, he said.

Like most escape room experiences, the Franco Center’s challenge “locks up” willing participants in a space and then requires them to answer successive questions — with the help of clues — in order to “escape.”

Wooden spoons are in a display case at the Franco Center in Lewiston. Musical spoons are a rich part of French-Canadian cultural music. Andree Kehn/Sun Journal

Participants at the Franco are provided a “mystery paper” at the beginning of the session that contains five brain teasers and space to pencil in vital clues. Each clue leads to the next activity, brain teaser or key to a locked box, which may hold the key to escape or merely the next clue in the series. Most of the course’s clues are found inside the center’s display cases or on top. Participants are allowed to handle anything on top of the display cases, Hodgkin said.

Hodgkin said he created the escape room to give people an interactive approach to learning about Franco-American history and the center’s many artifacts provided by local families.

“We do lots of tours and talk about various things here in the center and, honestly, kids think it’s boring,” Hodgkin said. “French history is part of our mission and I’d been thinking about doing an escape room for quite a while.”

Denise Scammon, marketing and development director, said all the items in and around more than 30 display cases were donated by local Franco-American families because they were important to them. Most of those donations are textile related since work in Lewiston during the age of the mills was mainly textile production, especially around “Little Canada” where the Franco Center is located. The center’s items include fancy clothes, home-sewn clothes, cradles, music cabinets, small organs, crocheted artifacts and sewing machines.

“It was important for women to have good needlework skills such as sewing and crochet because finished goods were expensive and not readily available,” Scammon said.

Scammon said it’s a joy watching escape room participants interact with the history. She said it’s also fun watching people’s interactions with Hodgkin, who often dresses as a detective as he introduces groups to the setting of the game and shadows them on their investigations among all the artifacts.

One of the lockboxes in the Franco Center’s escape room challenge yields a jigsaw and numeric puzzle that participants must solve to advance in the efforts to escape. The challenge is suitable for teens and adults. Andree Kehn/Sun Journal

“People always get tricked by thinking they have the key because they’ve already found one and they think it’s going to unlock the door (to their freedom),” Scammon said. “It isn’t.”

The escape room also serves as a great team-building exercise, with many businesses and school groups participating in it for more than just the historical factor. Groups from Androscoggin Bank and Community Credit Union finished the game in 25 minutes and 35 minutes respectively, and a French class from Oak Hill High School opened the padlock on the exit doors in 22 minutes. However, the average finishing time is around 50 minutes, Hodgkin said.

The Franco Center in Lewiston is in the former St. Mary’s Church on Cedar Street and now serves as a historic and cultural center for all things Franco-American. Andree Kehn/Sun Journal

Hodgkin and Scammon said the groups employ some creative methods to beat the course, like splitting into groups, taking pictures of the guide sheet and completing legs of the course separately. While the cunning of these groups makes for a fun time watching, Hodgkin said he might restrict the use of cellphones and splitting into groups to make the course more challenging and, hopefully, more fun.

“We’ve had schools — Oak Hill High School and Oxford Hills — and we’ve had a bunch of families, too,” Hodgkin said. “We had one family the other day and they were arguing with each other. It’s just been fun watching these groups because each group is so different.”

The draw of younger crowds has given the Franco Center some hope for spreading knowledge and appreciation of local Franco-American history, Hodgkin and Scammon said. Hodgkin, who said he loathed history as a subject in school, said he is hoping programs and events like the escape room will also provide the interactive piece he feels would have engaged him as a young learner.

“I had four teenagers the other day go through the whole thing with no problem and three of them have never stepped foot in the Franco Center,” he said. “So, this definitely brings people who have never been here to learn about history and about what we do.”

The current layout will continue until October, when Hodgkin said he plans to have something spooky in store.

For more information and to book a reservation, go to francocenter.org/escape-room-at-the-franco-center/

Reservations are $8 per person and can be paid online or at the door via cash or card.

Jake Hodgkin, the production manager for the Franco Center, fills out an escape room answer sheet on Monday. Hodgkin designed the escape room with the goal of sharing some of the unique history in the center’s displays. Andree Kehn/Sun Journal

Embroidery displays, including a large portrait, are showcased at the Franco Center in Lewiston. Two aisles on the center’s main floor are lined with display cases, some of which contain clues for participants to advance through the escape room experience. Andree Kehn/Sun Journal