Thomaston Rural Heritage Center 2003

Abstract

THE THOMASTON RURAL HERITAGE CENTER won a $190,000 grant from HUD to rehab a big, ugly, 1950s-era building. Originally used for vocational education, the structure would become a showcase for local crafts and a place to make and sell pepper jelly, a specialty of the area. The Rural Studio had to figure out what to do with the building—how to program it—and how to phase the work over a period of years. If the center’s board of directors were not sure what they wanted, they knew what they disliked: the farmer’s market, completed by the studio in 2000, that stands in their downtown. Because it was made of unfinished steel, it rusted, and “for these folks rust very much equals decay,” Freear says.