The Star of Hope Lodge is a historic former commercial and fraternal society building on Main Street in downtown

Vinalhaven, Maine Vinalhaven is a town on the larger of the two Fox Islands in Knox County, Maine, United States. Vinalhaven is also used to refer to the island itself. The population was 1,279 at the 2020 census. It is home to a thriving lobster fishery and ho ...

. Built in 1885, this large Second Empire building is one of a few commercial buildings to survive in the island community. It was restored in the 1980s by artist

Robert Indiana Robert Indiana (born Robert Clark; September 13, 1928 – May 19, 2018) was an American artist associated with the pop art movement. His iconic image LOVE was first created in 1964 in the form of a card which he sent to several friends and acq ...

for use as an art gallery and studio space. It was listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

in 1982.

Description and history

The former Star of Hope Lodge building stands on the north side of Main Street in the center of Vinalhaven's main village. It is a large three-story wood-frame structure, with a mansard roof and clapboarded exterior. The street-facing facade has two storefronts flanking a central entrance, which is in a slightly projecting section topped by a mansard turret. The entrance is recessed, the sheltering section of the projection supported by large Italianate brackets. Windows on the upper floors are topped by bracketed and gabled pediments, and the steep sections of the mansard roof have wall dormers with long paired windows with rounded tops. A Palladian style window adorns that level in the central projecting section. The storefronts each consist of display windows on either side of a recessed entry. with The hall was built in 1885 by the local chapter of the

Independent Order of Odd Fellows The Independent Order of Odd Fellows (IOOF) is a non-political and non-sectarian international fraternal order of Odd Fellowship. It was founded in 1819 by Thomas Wildey in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. Evolving from the Order of Odd ...

(IOOF), a fraternal society, with retail space on the ground floor, and club meeting spaces above. It is one of Vinalhaven's few surviving reminders of its economic height in the 1880s, when granite from the island was shipped to many parts of the eastern United States. After the IOOF ceased activity, the building was acquired by photographer

Eliot Elisofon Eliot Elisofon (April 17, 1911 – April 7, 1973) was an American documentary photographer and photojournalist. Life From the Lower East Side in New York City, Elisofon graduated from DeWitt Clinton High School in 1929 and Fordham University in ...

as a studio space, which he later rented to

. Indiana purchased the building after Elisofon died, and oversaw its rehabilitation. Following his death in 2018, the building was transferred to the foundation specified in his will, Star of Hope Inc.

References

{{National Register of Historic Places Clubhouses on the National Register of Historic Places in Maine Commercial buildings on the National Register of Historic Places in Maine National Register of Historic Places in Knox County, Maine Second Empire architecture in Maine Buildings and structures completed in 1885 Buildings and structures in Knox County, Maine Odd Fellows buildings in Maine Artists' studios in the United States Vinalhaven, Maine

Description and history

See also

References