BEAUFORT, S.C. — Penn Center on St. Helena Island, outside Beaufort, S.C., has landed a two-year, $750,000 federal grant to repair and stabilize the Butler Building, the campus structure that served as the historic institution’s original museum and library.
The money comes from the National Park Service through its African American Civil Rights Preservation Grant program. The grant will pay for remediation and stabilization work on the building, which students and teachers built in the early 20th century.
The award is part of a national round in which the park service is investing $21.8 million in FY25 African American Civil Rights Preservation and History Grants for 54 projects in 18 states. Those grants are paid for through the Historic Preservation Fund, which was established in 1977.
The project is about more than bricks and mortar. Archival materials stored inside the Butler Building, including newspapers, photographs, newsletters and books, will be organized, digitized and interpreted by students working with Barbara McCaskill, a Distinguished Research Professor of English at the University of Georgia, and Alison McCletchie of South Carolina State University. Faculty and students from Georgia Tech and the University of South Carolina Beaufort will help stabilize the structure and map it digitally, and participants will get training from historic preservationists.
The preservation effort grew out of an annual student residency at Penn Center run through a Mellon Foundation-funded partnership with the university’s Willson Center for Humanities and Arts. The work is meant to keep the building and the archival materials inside it safe for future students and researchers.
