USS ALASKA
Captain
- Joined
- Mar 16, 2016
Ground broken for $65M Civil War history center in Fayetteville
By Paul Woolverton
Staff writer
Ground was ceremonially broken in Fayetteville on Wednesday for a $65 million museum complex dedicated to the Civil War era, the most divided period in American history.
Participants at the event said they hope the complex will be an educational resource and help heal racial and cultural divides that persist in the United States more than 150 years after the war ended.
The North Carolina Civil War & Reconstruction History Center is to be built next to the remnants of a Confederate Army arsenal on Arsenal Avenue on Haymount Hill. So far, organizers have obtained $27 million in government commitments and private donations to pay for it. They plan to ask the state, which has contributed $5 million, for another $25 million.
Backers say the history center will be a nexus of knowledge about the 1861 to 1865 failed rebellion of the Southern states. And it will cover the Reconstruction Era, a difficult period immediately after the war when the United States government brought the former Confederate states back into the union and approximately 4 million newly freed slaves into American citizenship and society.
The first phase involves rehabilitating and moving three historic buildings on the property to form a “village,” said Mac Healy, the president of the North Carolina Civil War & Reconstruction History Center Foundation.
One will be a support center, and one will be a digital education center for distance learning, Healy said. The third will be a center for the study of the Civil War and Reconstruction period, Healy said, run in partnership with Fayetteville State, UNC Pembroke and UNC Wilmington.
Organizers hope the second phase, which is to include a 60,000-square-foot museum building, can start construction in 2020 and open a few years after. The new museum building will replace the Museum of the Cape Fear, a small history museum on the site that opened in 1987.
Staff writer Paul Woolverton can be reached at [email protected] and 486-3512.
Excerpts from article here - http://www.fayobserver.com/news/201...-65m-civil-war-history-center-in-fayetteville
Cheers,
USS ALASKA
By Paul Woolverton
Staff writer
Ground was ceremonially broken in Fayetteville on Wednesday for a $65 million museum complex dedicated to the Civil War era, the most divided period in American history.
Participants at the event said they hope the complex will be an educational resource and help heal racial and cultural divides that persist in the United States more than 150 years after the war ended.
The North Carolina Civil War & Reconstruction History Center is to be built next to the remnants of a Confederate Army arsenal on Arsenal Avenue on Haymount Hill. So far, organizers have obtained $27 million in government commitments and private donations to pay for it. They plan to ask the state, which has contributed $5 million, for another $25 million.
Backers say the history center will be a nexus of knowledge about the 1861 to 1865 failed rebellion of the Southern states. And it will cover the Reconstruction Era, a difficult period immediately after the war when the United States government brought the former Confederate states back into the union and approximately 4 million newly freed slaves into American citizenship and society.
The first phase involves rehabilitating and moving three historic buildings on the property to form a “village,” said Mac Healy, the president of the North Carolina Civil War & Reconstruction History Center Foundation.
One will be a support center, and one will be a digital education center for distance learning, Healy said. The third will be a center for the study of the Civil War and Reconstruction period, Healy said, run in partnership with Fayetteville State, UNC Pembroke and UNC Wilmington.
Organizers hope the second phase, which is to include a 60,000-square-foot museum building, can start construction in 2020 and open a few years after. The new museum building will replace the Museum of the Cape Fear, a small history museum on the site that opened in 1987.
Staff writer Paul Woolverton can be reached at [email protected] and 486-3512.
Excerpts from article here - http://www.fayobserver.com/news/201...-65m-civil-war-history-center-in-fayetteville
Cheers,
USS ALASKA