The North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources announces that the town of Southern Pines will receive a federal Historic Preservation Fund grant of $7,500 for the Weymouth Center for the Arts & Humanities

The funds are to be used to conduct the first part of a cultural landscape report (CLR). The Southern Pines Garden Club will provide matching funds in the amount of $5,000.

The CLR, Part I, will include a history of the landscape, a review of document collection and chronology, a landscape history narrative and period plans, and an existing conditions narrative.

A cultural center since 1979, Weymouth offers an established Chamber Music Series, the Ragan Writers Series, and the Arts and Humanities Lecture Series. The center also supports a writers-in-residence program, which offers writers stays of up to two weeks a year to pursue their work.

Weymouth was originally built as the home of James Boyd, an industrialist from Pennsylvania. Boyd secured the services of his nephew, Alfred B. Yeomans, who was practicing landscape architecture in Chicago, to come to Southern Pines to create a landscape plan for the estate. Using native flora and drought-tolerant ornamentals, Yeomans created a design that both blended with the natural surroundings and proved viable in the long-leaf pine ecosystem of the 2,500-acre estate.

During the 1920s, Weymouth became home to Boyd’s grandson, also named James, a well-known writer in the early part of the 20th century, and his wife, Katharine. The Boyd family maintained ownership of the home until Katharine’s death in 1976, when the property was acquired by the Friends of Weymouth. Weymouth was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1977 as significant for the literary, social and humanitarian contributions of the Boyd family.

After working at Weymouth, Alfred Yeomans went on to design the Weymouth Heights subdivision in Southern Pines and the initial layout for the Knollwood subdivision between Southern Pines and Pinehurst. Yeomans is also credited for helping to create the park-like setting for which Southern Pines is known. As a great deal of Alfred Yeoman’s work has been neglected or forgotten, the report will help to highlight and preserve some of the work of this important Southern landscape architect.

This federal Historic Preservation Fund grant was awarded by the State Historic Preservation Office through the National Park Service’s Certified Local Government Program, a preservation partnership between local, state and national governments focused on promoting historic preservation at the grass-roots level. The Historic Preservation Fund is a federal matching grant program administered jointly by the National Park Service, United States Department of the Interior and the State Historic Preservation Office.

The State Historic Preservation Office awarded a total of $92,000 in grant support to nine historic preservation projects.

“May is National Preservation Month,” said Cultural Resources Secretary Linda A. Carlisle, as she made the grant announcement in Salisbury, one of the communities receiving a grant. “This year’s theme is ‘Old is the New Green,’ and historic preservation grants help communities ensure that their vital heritage is cared for and shared.”

Preservation Month in North Carolina is co-sponsored by the State Historic Preservation Office, part of the Department of Cultural Resources and the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

Information is available at the website at www.ncculture.com.