A Fitting Tribute

Howland Center fundraises for portico, and beyond, to honor Northcutt

Shortly after moving to Beacon in 2007, Thomas de Villiers, the vice president of the Howland Cultural Center’s board of directors, recalls meeting Florence Northcutt, the center’s longtime champion, who died last month at 97. 

De Villiers was sitting on a bench, reading a book, near his Main Street apartment when Northcutt, then 80 and president of the Howland board, parked nearby. “She had her dog, Major, who she took everywhere,” de Villiers said. “She invited me to come inside. I said, ‘I will, a little later.’ ”

A couple of hours later, after an appointment, de Villiers walked into the ornate brick building at 477 Main St., which in 1973 became the first structure in Beacon to be listed on the National Register of Historic Places. There, he found Northcutt on a step ladder, patching the walls of the performance room. 

“She said, ‘I need some help,’ and I became a volunteer,” de Villiers said. “She did that with just about everybody.”

That room was renamed Northcutt Hall in 2022. For the past year, de Villiers and the other officers — secretary Craig Wolf, treasurer Hannah Brooks and president Theresa Kraft — have overseen a campaign to raise $150,000 to restore the Howland’s deteriorated portico and central facade (the front doors and everything above them).

The 152-year-old building’s need for repairs is never-ending, but the portico project dates to 2020, when the board discussed painting the wooden support columns. As they looked closer, they discovered rot. In other spots, aging brick needed repair, and the foundation was no longer sufficient to support the portico. 

So they launched Pennies for a Portico, named after a penny drive undertaken 26 years earlier by Beacon school children to help rebuild the slate roof. That effort, engineered by Northcutt, raised nearly $10,000. Students from Glenham Elementary raised $3,000 on their own. 

This time around, as hoped, coffee cans filled with bills and coins began to appear on the center’s stoop. Board members found envelopes with cash left anonymously with the mail. Someone even left a 2-gallon orange Home Depot bucket filled with coins. 

Big checks came in, too. On May 20, the Beacon City Council agreed to renew a $50,000 community facilities grant that was awarded to the center in 2021 for facade improvements but had been deferred while it secured additional funding. The Howland also recently received $50,000 from the New York State Council on the Arts for the project. 

After accounting for revenue from a gala held last month at the Roundhouse, the board met its goal. The fundraising, however, continues, to cover the cost of materials and construction driven higher by inflation and “for the unseen that we’ll uncover” when the project begins, Kraft said. 

The organization is working with architect Jeff Wilkinson and contractor Tom Clemmens, who specialize in historic preservation. Reconstruction is expected to begin this year and will include reinstalling scrollwork that fell from the roof’s gables decades ago “and hasn’t ever been seen by anyone alive,” Wolf said. 

Board members said that seeing the project through to completion, and continuing to save for future rehab work, is a fitting way to honor Northcutt, who spent 38 years — including 21 as board president — promoting art, music, theater and all things cultural at the center. 

The building was acquired in 1978, two years after its first and only other occupant, the Howland Circulating Library, moved to 313 Main St. and became the Howland Public Library. A year after the acquisition, programming began under the Howland Cultural Center banner. 

The change in ownership happened “at a poor time in a poor town,” Wolf said, but when Northcutt moved to Beacon in 1984, while still working  as a speech therapist in Westchester County, she labored tirelessly to integrate the new center into the community. 

“She was very good at pulling people in and selling the concept of a cultural center in a town that didn’t have a lot of interest in culture,” Wolf said. After retiring in 1997, “she had a lot of tread left on the tires, to our eternal gratitude.”

By the time of her death on May 17, Northcutt was ready to pass stewardship of the Howland to her fellow board members, Kraft said. “She said she knew it was in good hands.”