Voters to act on historic house Patten property was home of founder of Lumberman’s Museum

PATTEN – The Patten Historical Society moved closer to getting a permanent home after selectmen on Tuesday approved the group’s request for a special town meeting to decide the future of the former home of Dr. Lore Rogers.

The meeting has been set for 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 2, at the Patten Recreation Department.

Rogers founded the Patten Lumberman’s Museum in 1962. The museum since has grown to include nine buildings and more than 4,000 exhibits pertaining to the state’s lumbering industry through World War II.

According to Marcia Pond-Anderson, historical society president and director of the Lumbermen’s Museum, the society has had several different storefront locations. When those sites get rented, however, the society has to move. The group currently is homeless.

“We need to establish a base where we can house the society and our artifacts,” Anderson said, adding that some of the artifacts are in a back room at a grocery store and others are stored in her home.

“We still get donations, but we don’t have any place to put them,” she said.

The town assumed ownership of the Rogers house on Rogers Lane as tax-acquired property in December 2000. Since then, it has been used by firefighters as a training site.

The historical society is asking that the town give it the house and the land it is on.

Town Manager Rhonda Harvey said selectmen aren’t allowed to donate property on their own and must get approval from voters.

“Everybody feels it’s a worthwhile project as long as [the historical society] can financially maintain it themselves,” Harvey said Wednesday.

Noting the state of the local economy, she said, “They can’t be coming back to the town for funding.”

Although it doesn’t look very good on the outside, the inside of the building isn’t bad, Pond-Anderson said. The foundation is solid, the chimney is good and the double fireplace is sound, she said.

The historical society president said she didn’t think that restoring the house would be that difficult.

“It’s not in that bad shape that we can’t get it restored back to its original condition,” she said. “It will take time and hard work, [but] I feel it’s doable.”

She said there already have been offers from people to do painting and carpentry work to get the house in shape. One woman who owns one of the oriental rugs that was in the house when Rogers and his wife, Katherine, lived there has offered to donate it to the historical society.

“It would be our first major artifact to go back in,” Pond-Anderson said.

In addition to the special meeting, efforts also are under way to have the building listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Pond-Anderson noted that as historic properties in the town are lost, it becomes all the more important to preserve those that are left.

The restored Bradford House Bed & Breakfast located on Main Street dates back to the 1800s and was a working farm into the late 1980s. The town’s library, a former church, was the site where soldiers mustered to go off to war during the Civil War.

Those buildings, together with the Lumberman’s Museum and the Rogers house, could become a cultural asset and an economic attraction for the town, Pond-Anderson said.

The Rogers house “will add to the town culturally as well as benefit people in the town by giving them a sense of their history,” she said. “It’s just a matter of getting the word out and teaching people a different way of thinking.”