ROCKLAND, Maine — The effort to restore the birthplace of one of the country’s most renowned poets has gained a major boost.
The Quimby Family Foundation has agreed to donate money to help a community group acquire and restore the Broadway duplex where Edna St. Vincent Millay was born in 1892.
Ann Morris, curator of the Rockland Historical Society, said the community must raise money to match the unspecified Quimby donation.
An organization will need to be created to maintain the property once it is acquired and restored, Morris said. That organization also will be designed to focus on poetry and writing, she said.
“This is so exciting and so daunting at the same time,” Morris said.
The curator of the Rockland Historical Society said the Quimby Foundation assists nonprofit organizations that encourage heritage tourism, which Morris said the Millay house would do.
Roxanne Quimby voiced her support for the restoration project in an emailed statement.
“As a fan of Millay’s poetry and the beautiful coast of Maine, I am pleased to work with Michelle and the Rockland Historical Society to help realize this worthy ambition,” Quimby said in the statement.
Michelle Gifford is the real estate agent for the property and has worked with supporters of restoration effort.
Morris said the bank that has a mortgage on the property has agreed to allow the current owner to sell it for less than what is owed.
The house is for sale for $88,000, but the two-unit building on a third of an acre is in need of significant repairs.
A contractor inspected the home and determined that the house would need new plumbing, a new heating system, foundation work and cosmetic work. The estimated cost for repairs and restoration totaled $200,000, not including the purchase price.
Millay was born on the southern side of the mirror-image duplex at 198-200 Broadway. Her parents were the first people to live in the duplex, which was built that year. Millay lived at the house for three months before her parents moved to Union. When her parents divorced, she, her siblings and mother moved to Camden.
The Women’s Educational Club placed a plaque on the house in 1935 that designated it as Millay’s birthplace. That was taken down in the 1960s or 1970s when the home’s occupants grew tired of people stopping by and asking to go through the home. That plaque is now in possession of the historical society.
Morris pointed out that the plaque, however, originally had been placed on the northern side of the duplex, which was the incorrect location.
The goal is to create a museum in the apartment where Millay was born. The other apartment would be rented out to support the operation of the historic site. The museum could be used to hold literary seminars. The home also could be a place for writers to meet with publishers, the historical society curator said.
Millay would become nationally known at the age of 19 with the publishing of the poem “ Renascence.” She went on to become one of the most popular writers of her time and won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1923.