The Marblehead Museum has announced that it has received a Save America’s Treasures grant from the National Park Service, Department of the Interior, from its Historic Preservation Fund for the preservation of the museum’s Brick Kitchen & Slave Quarters of the 1768 Jeremiah Lee Estate.
This matching grant will allow the museum to preserve the building by reinforcing and securing its structure; replacing the roof; preserving the windows; replacing inadequate and old electrical, plumbing, and HVAC systems; and more. When completed, the building will be opened to the public as an exhibit and programming space alongside the Jeremiah Lee Mansion.
In 2021, the Marblehead Museum purchased the 1766 brick building adjacent to its magnificent Jeremiah Lee Mansion. One of the finest examples of Georgian architecture in the U.S., the museum has owned and given tours of the Mansion since 1909. The acquisition of the new brick building, which research shows was used by Lee as a detached kitchen, coach house, and slave quarters, brought back together all of Colonial merchant Jeremiah Lee’s original property. Since 2021, museum staff, alongside archaeologists, architectural historians, and scholars, have studied the brick building and the history surrounding it, including that of the enslaved people who worked and lived on the estate.
Established in 1977 and authorized at $150 million per year through 2023, the National Park Service’s Historic Preservation Fund has provided more than $2 billion in historic preservation grants to states, tribes, local governments and nonprofit organizations. Administered by the NPS, Congress appropriates from the HPF to support a variety of historic preservation projects to help preserve the nation’s cultural resources and history. To learn more and see a full list of grant recipients, visit https://www.nps.gov/orgs/1207/sat-09-12-23.htm.