ARROW ROCK (AP) - A group working to restore historic buildings in Arrow Rock is celebrating a successful fundraising campaign.
Friends of Arrow Rock raised $460,000, making it eligible for a $230,000 grant from the Jeffris Family Foundation, which preserves significant buildings in small towns across the country.
Steven Byers, interim executive director of Friends of Arrow Rock, says it took 2½ years to raise the money but the goal was reached before a June 30 deadline.
The $690,000 project will restore the Sites House, the J.P. Sites Gun Shop, the Masonic Lodge Hall and the Independent Order of Odd Fellows Lodge Hall in central Arrow Rock.
According to Arrow Rock records, the gunsmith shop was the workplace of Johnny Sites, who moved to Arrow Rock in 1844.
"This challenge grant will fund much-needed work on four very historically significant properties of the Friends of Arrow Rock," said Thomas Hall, president of Friends of Arrow Rock. "We are very grateful for the gifts we have received for this effort."
The Grand Lodge of Missouri, the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, the Missouri Press Foundation, the William T. Kemper Foundation and the Buckner Foundation all contributed to the local match.
Byers says renovation work is expected to start in late summer or early fall and take about a year.
The second floor of the Masonic Lodge is to be converted into a conference room, and the Odd Fellows Lodge will house the Missouri Press Association's Print Shop Museum and an assembly room furnished in the style of the late 1800s.
Byers said furnishing the second level of the Masonic Lodge will require another fundraiser. The fundraising goal has not been set, but Byer says it will not be as ambitious as the first one.