The John and Lile Gibbons Center for Arctic Studies at Bowdoin College, home to the Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum. The 16,000-square-foot building saw over 15,000 visitors since the museum was reopened this May. It was part of a $37 million project by Bowdoin along with neighboring Barry Mills Hall, which houses classrooms, offices and study areas, as well as a 300-person event space. Courtesy of Bowdoin College

Bowdoin’s Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum has welcomed a record 15,910 visitors since it reopened in the John and Lile Gibbons Center for Arctic Studies this past spring.

This is a big jump from the trickle of students and visiting academics that explored the former museum space, located in a single, dark-paneled room in Bowdoin’s Hubbard Hall.

The former Arctic Museum closed in November 2022. Among the items that had to be moved into the new center were a 600-pound stuffed walrus and Admiral Robert E. Peary’s original sledge from an expedition to the North Pole in 1908 and 1909. The new, 16,426-square-foot building was primarily funded by bond proceeds and gifts, a spokesperson for the college said. Foremost among those gifts was a contribution made by John and Lile Gibbons, the building’s namesakes and parents of four Bowdoin alums.

Both the Arctic Studies Center and its neighboring building, Barry Mills Hall, were built with mass timber frame construction, the first commercial-scale buildings in the state to do so. Mass timber buildings, much like those that are “timber-framed,” have wooden bones — by laminating dimensional lumber into larger pieces, builders are able to avoid using steel or other man-made materials.

“It’s really exciting for us,” Rebecca Celis, principal at HGA, the design firm that worked with Bowdoin on the plans for Barry Mills Hall and the Arctic Studies Center, said of its mass timber construction. “It is also part of trying to help show that we can invest in the future sustainable development of Maine’s forests and connect to the local timber industry.”

Head architect Nat Madson said the building design was inspired by glass lantern slides in the museum’s collection.

“The expansive Arctic backdrop turns every object in the image into a silhouette imbued with mystery,” he said on the building’s dedication on May 11. “And we asked ourselves rather early in the process, ‘Can this building somehow take on that quality?’ ”

Bowdoin’s Arctic Museum has been an installment at the college since 1967, when its collection was heavily supplemented by contributions from explorer and 1877 alum Robert E. Peary, who worked in the Arctic from 1908–1954. Since the 1980s, an endowment has funded the college’s Arctic Studies Center, which has supported student work and a number of expeditions north. Most recently, two Bowdoin juniors sailed from Castine to Labrador (and back) onboard the schooner Bowdoin. Now owned by Maine Maritime Academy, it’s the same ship that Donald Baxter MacMillan, class of 1898, had built in 1921 for his Arctic expeditions. Before this summer, students hadn’t sailed onboard the Bowdoin since 1954.

While visitors flocked to the new building to see the college’s Arctic collection, Bowdoin facilities, contracting with Optimum Construction, has been completing renovations of the former museum space in Hubbard. A contractor on-site said that the space would be converted into a reading room and study space for students. Construction is on target to be completed next month.

Renovations underway in Hubbard Hall, which formerly housed Bowdoin College’s Arctic Museum. Once finished, the space will serve as a new reading room for students. Luna Soley / The Times Record

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