State Launches Resident Curator Program

          The Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has announced a new way to care for some of its historic but underused properties. The department owns a number of historic buildings in state parks or forests for which it does not have a use. In addition to DEP, municipalities, nonprofit land trusts, and water companies all fall into this category. Because the buildings have no direct connection to the owners’ mission, they are low on the list of funding priorities. The issue became most urgent in 2003, when the South Central Connecticut Regional Water Authority offered seventeen historic buildings for moving from Authority owned land (see CPN, November/December 2003). To date, only one small outbuilding has been successfully moved.

For several years, the Connecticut Trust has urged owners of open space land to think creatively about ways of preserving historic buildings on those lands. In 2006 the Trust included these buildings in its annual list of The Most Important Threatened Historic Places in Connecticut. In 2008 the Trust awarded an Historic Preservation Technical Assistance Grant (HPTAG) to the Derby Historical Society for a capital needs assessment of the Smith-Curtiss house, an early 18^th-century house in Osbornedale State Park in Derby. More recently, the Trust awarded another HPTAG to the Friends of State Parks for needs assessments of houses being considered for the program.

            The new Connecticut program, inspired by ones in Massachusetts and Maryland, will allow individuals, organizations or businesses to lease the houses for 20 to 25 years, but instead of paying rent they must restore and maintain the buildings. Properties may be used for either for-profit or non-profit undertakings or a combination of both, but curators must open the properties to the public at least twice per year. Curators will be chosen based on the quality of their proposals. The leases, for 20 to 25 years, cannot be transferred, and all restoration work must adhere to the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards.

            The first two properties to be offered will be the Smith-Curtiss house and the Worthen house, built in about 1783, in Enders State Forest, Granby. Information on the houses and application materials will be available sometime after July 31. The department plans to offer an additional two to four houses per year.