Old Saybrook. After a
multi-year restoration, the Old Town Hall was formally rededicated as the Katharine Hepburn Cultural
Arts Center
on October 20.
The
building was originally built in 1911 by the Old Saybrook Musical and Dramatic
Club as a "building suitable for town and social purposes." The upper
level was an auditorium and the lower level housed town offices, which by the
1950s had taken over the entire structure, filling in the auditorium. In 1999
town voters approved a referendum to convert the former Main Street
School into a new town
hall and restore the old town hall as a cultural center. The building was
individually listed on the National Register in 2007.
Restoration cost $4.3 million. Of
that more than $1 million came from federal and state grants, including a
$200,000 restoration grant from the Connecticut Commission on Culture and
Tourism.
The center
is named for Katharine Hepburn, whose family had a summer home in Fenwick.
Hepburn retired there in the 1990s and died in Old Saybrook in 2003. Chuck
Still, Executive Director, writes on the website, “The Center is unique, in my
experience, as it was born not of a singular artistic vision or a single
philanthropist’s largesse, but instead of an entire town’s desire to reclaim
some of their history and pay tribute to its most celebrated resident. Sure,
there are lots of famous home museums that do this, but the Center is not some
homage to the past. It is instead a living, breathing organism, touching lives,
educating, entertaining and enlightening people all along Connecticut’s shore and up and down the
river valley.”
