The National Park Service is seeking a lessee for the McGlashan-Nickerson House At Saint Croix Island International Historic Site.

The historic McGlashan-Nickerson House within Saint Croix Island International Historic Site, once considered for demolition by the National Park Service, now is being offered for lease to someone who would restore it.

It was almost a year ago when the Park Service announced that the 135-year-old house, while considered architecturally significant by Maine preservationists, was deemed excess property. At the time the agency wanted someone to buy the dilapidated property and move it to another location.

The Park Service acquired the property and house in 2000, and from 2005 to 2014 used it for various administrative services for the historic site, which commemorates the 1604 location where French explorers tried to colonize the territory they called Acadia. However, the agency then built a new building to serve as visitor center and for administrative purposes, and the McGlashan-Nickerson house fell out of use.

Maine Preservation included the house on its 2018 list of the Most Endangered Historic Places. The organization's staff noted that the house "shares a long drive with the 1854 Gothic Revival Joshua Pettegrove House, one of only a few houses in the state set in a landscape designed by Andrew Jackson Downing, the founder of American landscape architecture. These houses are both individually listed in the National Register of Historic Places and form the southern boundary of the village running upriver to the north."

The preservation organization has offered to work with the Park Service to find a buyer for the house, one that could stabilize it and maintain it in a manner that is compatible with the park's nearby visitor center.

Now the Park Service says that based on feedback received during a public comment period it opened last November to discuss the building's future, the agency has selected a new alternative, which is to preserve the McGlashan-Nickerson House through a lease.

“We see this as an opportunity to repurpose an historic home and an even greater opportunity to preserve an important historical building that was connected to the 19th century Maine Red Granite Company,” said Superintendent Kevin Schneider.

Through a Request for Proposals (RFP), the McGlashan-Nickerson House is available for a long-term lease of up to 60 years on favorable terms. The lease will require that the lessee rehabilitate and preserve the building.

“Leasing the McGlashan-Nickerson House will improve resource stewardship and visitor experiences at Saint Croix Island International Historic Site by focusing limited NPS resources on protecting the site’s fundamental resources and values,” said Site Manager Meg Scheid.

The McGlashan-Nickerson House is located in the village of Red Beach in Calais, Maine. The building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Constructed about 1883, the McGlashan-Nickerson House is an Italianate-style, two-story frame dwelling with a long ell that extends to a carriage barn. It was built for Scottish immigrant George G. McGlashan, a shareholder in the Maine Red Granite Company. The property was later sold to Justice Samuel H. Nickerson in 1887.

During the 19th century, the village of Red Beach was a thriving community whose existence revolved around two important industrial enterprises: the Maine Red Granite company and the Red Beach Plaster Company. Both enterprises occupied a group of buildings that were concentrated along the banks of Red Beach Cove.

The house is one of the two or three most architecturally significant houses in the small village of Red Beach, and the only one that displays such wide use of Italianate-style details.