Millay House Rockland Renovations

Millay House Interior, South Living/Dining Room.

Millay House Interior, South Kitchen

Millay House Interior, Upstairs Bath.


Millay House Rockland needs your support to complete the final phase of restoring the birth home of the much beloved and highly acclaimed Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Edna St. Vincent Millay in Rockland, Maine.  We are a small group of passionate volunteers who have taken on the enormous goal: To preserve the birthplace of Edna St. Vincent Millay and celebrate her legacy through education, the literary arts, and significant collaboration within the Maine community and beyond.

Please help us finish the house’s interior so we can proceed with the exciting programs we envision for this center, where poets, writers, and the public can explore and engage in creative literary pursuits while preserving, celebrating, and carrying on her legacy.

We are in the last stage of preserving this double house where Millay was born, 189-200 Broadway in Rockland, Maine. When completed, it will be historically accurate yet modestly comfortable. One side will be rented and proceeds used to cover expenses of both. The other side will be used for hosting literary activities such as writers-in-residence, workshops, and seminars, in cooperation with other literary groups, schools, and universities.  

 Millay House Rockland will use Millay’s birth home as an opportunity to keep alive her place in the lexicon of important American and Maine poets.

To date Millay House Rockland has:
- Formed its own 501(c)3 non-profit organization
- Had the house listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the “Singhi Double Cottage”
- Been given outright ownership of the double house, located at 198-200 Broadway
- Already completely restored and painted its exterior
- Begun interior restoration work by replacing the heating and electrical systems and gutting areas

(Visit our website, millayhouserockland.org, for additional photos of the renovation process thus far.)

Work still needing to be done includes replacing, restoring, or installing:
Ø  Two kitchens
Ø  Two bathrooms
Ø  A wall between the two units 
Ø  Two living/dining rooms
Ø  Six bedrooms
Ø  Hardwood floors
Ø  Two powder rooms.                                                                                                                                                                     

Our goal is to complete the work in 2020.

We need $150,000 for this final phase and have already raised $46,000 for this restoration.  Once we have raised $100,000, we will be given another $20,000 by a funder who offered this as a challenge grant.

Will you help us reach this goal?

                                                                          Who was Edna (aka Vincent)? 

Though only six years separated the death of Emily Dickinson and the birth of Edna St. Vincent Millay, the two women and their poetry couldn’t be more different. Millay embodied the modern liberated woman of the Jazz Age.

Vincent was:
* Brilliant, outspoken, and brave; intense and passionate; an activist
* A scholar whose personal study spanned centuries of poetry and was reflected in her own work
* One of the most celebrated poets of the first half of the 20th century, in America and abroad
* The first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, in 1923 at the age of 31
* A poet whose books of poetry were enormous best sellers, even during depression years
* A much-sought-after reader or performer of her own work whose speaking tours were legendary
* One whose poems are just as relevant and resonate as profoundly today as during her lifetime.

Millay’s success is a nod to her intelligence, creativity, and hard work. After Millay’s father left the family, she and two sisters were raised by their mother in “reduced circumstances.” You often see aspects of her small, poor, coastal Maine community upbringing reflected in her poetry.

Though she graduated from high school with top honors, there were no resources for college. At 21, she was keeping house for her younger sisters when, on the basis of hearing her read her remarkable poem, “Renascence” at the Whitehall Inn, a mentor provided her a full scholarship to Vassar. Edna made the most of this fairy-godmother like opportunity and became the acclaimed poet she is today.

Emily Dickinson’s birthplace is being well preserved, and we believe Edna’s deserves to be, as well. Dickinson’s life was one of privilege; her grandfather was a founder of Amherst College and her father a lawyer who served in the U. S. Congress. Her family’s properties and their renovations have been well funded.

Millay’s humble background hasn’t provided Millay House Rockland with significant financial connections. We need individuals and organizations that know and respect Millay and her poetry to play fairy-godmother to us. We need you to wave your wand! 

In the beautiful and haunting words with which Vincent concludes “Renascence,”

The world stands out on either side
No wider than the heart is wide;
The soul can split the sky in two,
And let the face of God shine through.

Thank you for your help!