Ground broken for Mabee Farm education center

PHOTOGRAPHER: Peter R. Barber

Tim Mabee, left, shakes hands with U.S. Rep. Paul Tonko while his sister, Kim Mabee, looks on following a groundbreaking Wednesday at the Mabee Farm Historical Site in Rotterdam Junction.

Three descendants of Jan Mabee gathered with other public officials on Wednesday to break ground for the new George E. Franchere Education Center at the Mabee Farm Historic Site off Route 5S.

The new 12,000-square-foot building will allow the now seasonal historic site to operate year-round and expand its hands-on educational programs for area schools, which include instruction on blacksmithing, broom making, Colonial militia and Native American culture.

Currently, the farm is only open from May to October.

Built in 1705, the farm is one of the oldest surviving buildings in the Mohawk Valley. The Mabees owned the land until 1993, when it was donated to the Schenectady County Historical Society.

The education center is “many, many years in the making,” according to Historical Society President Edwin Reilly.

“Building an education center has been a longtime goal of the Mabee Farm Historic Site,” he said. “The realization of this goal is due in part to the friendship that former president John van Schaick cultivated with George Franchere.”

Franchere gave what the society calls a “generous endowment” in order to jump-start the $2.3 million project. So far, two-thirds of the needed funds have been generated and fundraising has been planned to come up with the rest.

In the new building, the historical society hopes to blend the best of its heritage with the best of modern technology. The new center will be built to look like and fit in with the rest of the Mabee Farm but will feature new technology to help make it environmentally friendly.

The new building will save $5,000 a year in energy costs and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 35,000 pounds by featuring solar panels and subsurface geothermal wells for climate control.

U.S. Rep. Paul Tonko, D-Amsterdam, called the new building the “essence of heritage tourism” and said that having a new facility will “serve as inspiration to feed our hearts, minds and souls with pioneer spirit that built this country and the world.”

A new education center will also help better preserve the historic farmhouse.

“Our offices and some of our artifact storage are presently in the 300-year-old building. We need to move these offices because this house is itself a historic artifact. We need to interpret the whole house, not have daily activities in it,” said Pat Barrot, site manager of the farm. “We also need to have artifact storage in a temperature-controlled environment.”

The education center will have three levels, two stories and a basement. The ground floor will feature the museum, gift shop and offices, the basement will serve as space for school programs and the second floor will feature a large area for artifact storage, spaces for staff research and a place for visiting scholars to study some of the site’s artifacts.

Kim Mabee, wife of Mabee descendant Gary Mabee, said, “We hope that this building becomes the backbone of the community.”

The new facility will feature a community room that will be available for meetings and other educational opportunities.

According to Barrot, last summer, the farm hosted more than 17,000 visitors, making it one of the top three tourist attractions in Schenectady County. By building an education center for year-round exhibits, the site hopes to host even more guests and raise awareness of the rich heritage in the Mohawk Valley.