The Historical Society is in the early stages of planning renovations to the Abbott School which will broaden accessibility of the building, expand our exhibit space, and create a permanent Castine history exhibit. We hope you will join us in this exciting process!

As you probably know, CHS uses only the first floor of the Abbott School for our changing history exhibits, gift shop, and a public restroom. The second floor is unfinished and accessible only by a narrow staircase. As part of our new Strategic Plan, we wish to make our beautiful historic spaces fully accessible and able to showcase Castine’s extraordinary history with an exciting new permanent exhibit.

We want to hear from our members about what you want to see in a permanent exhibit on Castine’s history.

• What are the stories that must be told?
• What artifacts should we exhibit?
• What modern technologies would help bring to life our fascinating past?
• What corners of our history require illumination and exploration?
• What would spark your imagination and deepen your understanding of “how we got here”?

To fully use the Abbott School space, we anticipate the installation of an elevator and renovated second floor exhibition galleries; we will engage architects, engineers, and exhibit designers as the planning process unfolds in the coming years.

This summer we are launching a series of stakeholder meetings, both in-person and via Zoom. We invite you and we want you, to join us for these professionally facilitated meetings. There are four opportunities throughout the summer where you can participate during which we will capture all shared ideas to inform our plans moving forward.

We thank you for your time, consideration, and ideas to help us together make Castine’s history accessible, relevant, and inspiring to all. Please call or email us with questions at director@castinehistoricalsociety.org or 207-326-4118.