RAISING THE ROOF
North Smithfield Heritage Association raising funds to maintain Heritage Hall
NORTH SMITHFIELD – The North Smithfield Heritage Association will soon be able to begin repairs on the roof of its Heritage Hall community building at 101 Greene St. thanks to the help of a $4,000 legislative grant obtained by Sen. Marc Cote, D-Dist. 24, Woonsocket and North Smithfield.
The funding from state taxpayers, combined with other grant funds held by the Association, will allow half of the building’s peaked roof, the east side, to be re-roofed.
“The present roof is about 30 years old and its integrity is beginning to be compromised,” Beth Faricy, a former local town administrator and the group’s treasurer, said of the funding award on Friday.
“This will preserve this part of the roof for many years to come,” she said.
Heritage Hall is the former St. Luke’s Episcopal Mission and was constructed in 1897 on land sold for $1 by the William Slater Mill Corp. of Slatersville as a church serving a congregation of families from the
Slatersville textile mills.
The mission was an offshoot of the St. James Epis-copal Church in Woonsocket, Faricy noted.
After the local Slater mills moved out of town, the mission was sold to Forrest Mowry and Myron O. Aldrich for a $10 in 1906 and became Lincoln Hall, a community hall, according to Faricy.
It was next sold to the Union Grange #13 for $1 in 1913 and was known as Grange Hall through 1994 when the Grange disbanded and turned the building over to the North Smithfield Heritage Association for its use. The building became Heritage Hall the following year, Faricy said.
Heritage Hall is leased to community groups for various activities, and also for special events such as weddings, anniversary parties, birthdays and showers, according to Faricy.
The fees collected help fund the Association’s preservation activities and maintenance and operational needs for the Hall and the Heritage Association’s activities at the Little Red School House at 190 School St. in Forestdale.
The non-profit Heritage Association has been able to collect a total of $350,000 in grant funding over the past 20 years, according to John Faricy, the organization’s president, and has used a portion of that funding to make needed upgrades to the Hall, including the installation of two full service kitchens, one for the main meeting room upstairs and the other downstairs where a small meeting space is located. The Association has also installed handicapped accessible bathrooms and chairlifts for the stairs to the lower level. Cote was listed as responsible for helping the Association to obtain grant funding from the Legislature four years in row.
Senator Cote on Friday said he was pleased to have been able to help the Association in its improvement work.
“I’ve always been a supporter of maintaining our history and if we can help preserve this building that is a good thing for the community,” he said.
John Faricy said the Association will be looking for Sen. Cote’s assistance again next year when it plans to complete repairs to the other half of the building’s roof.
Member Maurice Bourget said the building’s overall maintenance has been good thus far but added that the additional funding will help complete a needed major project.