Why is it called the “Brick Store”?
A man named William Lord was born at Kennebunk Landing in 1799. In 1820, William married Sarah Cleaves of Biddeford, and they lived at 20 Summer Street. The home still stands and is now known as the William Lord Mansion, a private residence. It was here that William and his wife raised their large family of ten children.
In 1825, at age 26, William Lord began construction on a dry goods store on Main Street in Kennebunk – the very building that is today the focal point of the Brick Store Museum. The building was unusual for its time because it was constructed of locally-kilned brick. Brick was a far more expensive choice, rather than constructing from plentiful Maine timber. Evidence of the building’s past (as a dry goods store) still remains upstairs: a windlass (or pulley system) used to hoist heavy goods is visible through a skylight (take a peek when you visit!).
William Lord’s great-granddaughter, Edith Cleaves Barry (1884 – 1969) was an artist and world-traveler. In 1932, she inherited the building and founded the Museum on the second floor of the building on July 1, 1936. Edith soon realized she needed more space, and in the 1950s purchased three neighboring historic buildings on the block. These buildings date from 1810 to 1860.
In the 1940s, Edith purchased an additional structure behind the Museum, at 4 Dane Street, an historic house built in 1850, in which her grandmother had lived. Here, she opened the New Art Center Workshop, which offered weekly lessons in a variety of art forms. In the 1960s, she sold the home to the Museum for $1.
The Museum was one of the few institutions in the country to open during the Great Depression; and remains one of only 21 museums in the entire United States (out of the more than 35,000 museums today) to be founded by a single woman.