Project Scope

…over the merits of approaching the interpretation from the perspective of southeast North Carolina or from that of the existing museum’s regional focus area.

Planners concluded that the whole state’s story is the most compelling one. A conceptual feasibility study validated this finding, demonstrating that the History Center will attract wider attention and stronger support by reaching beyond Fayetteville and Cumberland County to tell the larger story.

The result is an $80 million project involving a phased, multi-year approach to both fundraising and the History Center’s overall development.

The site will include a 60,000-square-foot main facility built outside the Fayetteville Arsenal’s archaeological footprint, protecting the remnants of the asset seized by Confederate forces in 1861 and leveled by General William T. Sherman’s engineers four years later.

The existing 1896 E. A. Poe House–described by one visitor as “a delightful step back in time”–and the three Civil War-era structures that form History Village are incorporated into the larger interpretive plan. This project offers North Carolinians and others of inquisitive mind a repository, not merely of artifacts, but of information and a context for it.

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