NORTHFIELD — More than two years after the C.S. Lewis College Foundation took possession of a Victorian home on the former Northfield Mount Hermon School campus, the foundation continues to renovate it with the intention of opening a study center.
Mary Key, director of the C.S. Lewis Study Center, said she hopes renovations will be complete within the next year.
“We’re perpetually fundraising and moving along when we can,” Key said, adding that the foundation raises money by holding conferences across the country.
The foundation intended to purchase the 217-acre Northfield Mount Hermon Campus in 2012 from then owner Hobby Lobby, intending to turn the campus into a C.S. Lewis College, but was unable to secure the necessary money.
Since then, Hobby Lobby has signed the property over to the National Christian Foundation, which recently announced it will implement “The Moody Center” on a portion of the campus.
The C.S. Lewis College Foundation, on the other hand, used the money it did have to purchase Green Pastures, a 14-room Victorian home built for Northfield Mount Hermon School founder and famed evangelist Dwight L. Moody in 1885, to refurbish it as the C.S. Lewis Study Center.
“We kind of regrouped and said, ‘What can we still do?’ and we felt that the study center was the next step,” Key said.
Key said the center will allow scholars to work on projects, dissertations, music and art, and will also be used to host small group seminars, book studies and poetry workshops.
“It’s envisioned as a focal point of Christian hospitality, study, reflection and learned conversation in New England,” Key said. “We really want it to be a welcoming place in pursuit of goodness, truth and beauty.”
Currently, Key said renovations are focused on the back part of the house.
“We want it to really last,” she said.
However, Key said the foundation has been using the front part of the building to host seminars. Most recently, the foundation held a summer conference called “Faith, Freedom & the Public Square” at the University of Massachusetts Amherst from July 8 to 10, and brought approximately 60 attendees to Green Pastures for a tour.
“When we do tours, we (cover) some of the history of the home, the architecture, as well as what the study center will become,” Key said. “There’s a lot to tell of Moody’s story. I think there’s a lot of room for people to help promote that legacy.”
The C.S. Lewis Foundation and The Moody Center are also key partners in an event to be held on the former Northfield Mount Hermon campus from 11 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. on Oct. 12 called “Restore: A New England Convocation.” The event, which is being organized by a network of Christians and church leaders called New England Alliance, will feature history tours, workshops, prayer and a unity gathering in the Moody Auditorium.
Once Green Pastures has been completely renovated, Key said the foundation will need to hire staff to care for the grounds, organize programming and arrange for scholars to stay at the C.S. Lewis Study Center. Key added that in the past several years, she and other members of the foundation have made important connections with local residents.
Still, she continued, the vision of C.S. Lewis College is not dead. Key hopes having the study center in the Pioneer Valley will eventually help the foundation move forward with its dream by allowing foundation staff to scope out other local locations.
“We continue to pursue the founding of C.S. Lewis College somewhere in the Pioneer Valley,” she said.