The Gibson House Museum has been awarded preservation and interpretation grants from the George B. Henderson Foundation, the City of Boston’s Community Preservation Fund and the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities. The Museum has been awarded a $44,000 grant from the George B. Henderson Foundation for restoration of its brownstone and repairs to its front-façade window wells, much-needed work that will help preserve the building and enhance its appearance and the local streetscape.
Supporting further restoration work at the Museum is a $95,000 Community Preservation Funds award from the City of Boston, which will help underwrite critical structural repairs to the building’s ground floor. In its award letter, the City Council noted that it was “thrilled to be able to assist [the Gibson House] in its growth and success,” and that the museum should be proud of its “contribution to the future of Boston.”
Complementing the Community Preservation Funds award is a $5,300 Project Grant from the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities (Mass Humanities), which will fund a reinterpretation plan to go with the ground-floor restoration, “Women at Work: The World of ‘Domestics’ in Victorian Boston.” Both projects will enhance the narrative of the immigrant servants who lived in the house and worked for three generations of the Gibson family.
Work on all three projects will begin later this year, according to the Museum.