The purchase was funded by the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board, the US Department of Agriculture, several foundations and individual donors.
The current owners, Martin and Marsha Hemm, decided to sell the museum and the marble collection in 2012 in part because they couldn’t afford a hike in electricity rates that year, according to the Rutland Herald. The Trust purchased the museum collection in 2012 and offered to buy the property for $480,000.
The museum, located in the former Vermont Marble Company manufacturing plant, has been in operation for more than 80 years. Immigrants from Italy, Sweden, Poland, Germany and Hungary, cut marble quarried in the region for the Jefferson Memorial, the U.S. Supreme Court Building, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and hundreds of other monuments.
Proctor became the largest manufacturer of marble in the world from 1880 to 1930, and Paul Bruhn, the executive director of the Trust, says he hopes the museum will tell the story of one of Vermont’s most important legacies: marble. The Trust acquisition includes a library of 3,000 historic glass plate negatives from that storied era in Vermont history.
The Trust has created a new nonprofit, the Vermont Marble Museum, Inc., that will oversee the operation of the museum. The Trust will own the building and lease it to the new nonprofit for the next five years, Bruhn says.
Over the next several years, the Trust will seek state, federal and other grants to upgrade the building to meet code requirements, address environmental cleanup and begin the renovation of the former mill building.
The facility would also offer incubator space for businesses.
