LEWISTON — The Franco Center at 46 Cedar St. is a gem for its collection and preservation of local Franco-American history as well as its production of live entertainment and the hosting of popular events like the recent Maine’s Got Talent.

The center also serves as a venue for weddings and private events and, during the downtime, hosts new offerings such as a history-themed escape room. (See related story.) The escape room, which is located in the main performance hall of the building, exposes amateur sleuths to many artifacts representing Lewiston’s historical Franco-American culture, said Denise Scammon, marketing and development director.

Set prominently in Lewiston’s “Little Canada,” the Franco Center was once Saint Mary’s Church, a beacon throughout the 20th century for countless Catholic Canadian families migrating to Lewiston for work, Scammon said. While families began their horse-and-buggy journeys from Canada in the mid-1800s, trains began bringing people in droves starting in 1874 to work in the several textile mills driving the local economy.

“French Canadian immigrants re-built their lives in Lewiston as they were in Canada,” Scammon said. “This . . . enabled immigrants to maintain their French language, schools, relationships and religion.”

Catholic leaders broke ground for Saint Mary’s Church in 1907. It held its first Mass on Christmas Day in 1927. Scammon said one of her favorite artifacts at the center is the bell that was fitted into the steeple the year the church was finished. The bell was forged in 1856 at the Henry Hooper Foundry in Boston, Massachusetts, formerly Paul Revere’s grandson Paul Revere III’s foundry. Its history is shrouded in mystery as no one knows where it was located during the  years between its forging and its installation at Saint Mary’s Church, Scammon said.

The bell fell silent in 1982 when loudspeakers joined it in the steeple. Some 18 years later on July 1, 2000, the church closed its doors due to high maintenance costs and waning attendance as mills downsized or closed and families moved.

Around the same time, when the Catholic Diocese of Portland deconsecrated the church, many community members, including former Mayor Lionel Guay, formed a 501(c)(3) to preserve the building. It has been the Franco Center ever since.

All items on display in the center were donated by local families or their relatives who moved to Little Canada. Many items are clothing or textile related, as most mills in and around the neighborhood were textile mills. Items include homemade or professional clothing, crochetwork, cobblery, sewing machines, cradles, dinnerware, music cabinets and organs.

Most essentials were made or available right in Little Canada, Scammon said. F.X. Marcotte, for example, whose furniture store still serves the region, at that time sold everything from cradles to coffins in his store near the Grand Trunk Rail Station at 103 Lincoln St., she said.

“(Marcotte) and his staff would often greet immigrants coming off the train and ask if they had a place to live, had a job and if they were meeting family and friends,” Scammon said. “The immigrants were offered the use of credit to buy what they needed in his store. . . . Some Franco Americans have told us that their grandparents never left the Little Canada neighborhood because everything they needed was within: home, family, friends, schools, shops, church. Many never owned cars and went everywhere on foot.”

Much has changed since the height of Little Canada’s Franco-American culture, but Saint Mary’s Church still stands, and in good condition, as it serves a mission to preserve that heritage while serving the neighborhood and city’s increasingly diverse population through education, performance and celebration.

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