STRAFFORD, Vt. - Construction of the long awaited Education Center at the Justin Morrill State Historic Site in Strafford, Vermont has begun.

Detail from Justin Morrill's 1850 landscape design

The year-round facility is a reconstruction of the original horse barn shown on Morrill’s 1850 landscape plan for his Gothic Revival estate. Justin Morrill, US Representative from 1854-1866 and US Senator from 1866 until his death in 1898, developed extensive landscape plans for his Strafford home.

The original horse barn framed and defined Morrill’s original landscape design, and its reconstruction will restore this design concept and offer a heated facility for year-round use for public programming, collection storage, and display of Senator Morrill’s important library collection owned by the Town of Strafford. The transfer of this non-circulating collection freed up space in the town library, allowing it to become a more active public library for the community.

The new building, to be completed June 2007, was designed by Gossens Bachman Architects of Montpelier, Vermont. The exterior design replicates the original horse barn which was relocated on the site in the early 1900s. The interior will be modern flexible space. The General Contractor for the project is Wright Construction of Mount Holly, Vermont.

The project is funded by two Federal Grants from the Enhancement Program of the Vermont Agency of Transportation written by Lorenz Rutz of Strafford and by three State of Vermont Capital Budget appropriations to the Vermont Division for Historic Preservation.

The Vermont Division for Historic Preservation owns and operates the National Historic Landmark as one of the State Historic Sites. Planning for the new Education Center began in 2001 when Lucinda Brockway of Past Design, a landscape preservation and design firm in Kennebunk, Maine, presented a site development plan to the Friends of the Morrill Homestead, a non-for-profit organization that works with the State of Vermont on the interpretation of Senator Justin Morrill State Historic Site.

Justin Morrill is most remembered today as the chief author and sponsor of the Land Grant College Acts, considered by many to be the most important piece of educational legislation in the 19th century. The Land Grant Acts provided funding in each state for a college to provide a liberal and practical education for farmers, mechanics, artisans and laborers. Today there are 172 land grant institutions with 2.1 million students and over 20 million alumni in the United States.

John Dumville
Historic Sites Operations Chief
802-828-3051