A banner on the balcony of the former Custom House in Waldoboro welcomes visitors to new nonprofit Open House of History, where founder Michael Amico hopes to inspire empathy and discovery through exploration of the greater community’s shared history and emotions. (Molly Rains photo)
A new era is unfolding at the storied Waldoboro Custom House.
Michael Amico, founder of a new nonprofit based in the 170-year-old building, hopes it will be a time of discovery as well as a chance to bring visitors together.
“I’ve been preparing for this for most of my life, really,” Amico said June 11 while sitting at a desk in the bright, open downstairs of the 908 Main St. building.
With Open House of History, the organization Amico founded this spring, the researcher and performer hopes to bring together the interests and curiosities that have guided him through his career so far while creating a space where members of the greater Waldoboro community can connect with each other and with their local history in unexpected ways.
Open House of History is “a community-centered space to build empathy and connection through history and an emotional engagement with the past,” according to the nonprofit’s website.
The organization will be headquartered at the Custom House, Amico said, and much of its work will consist of a wide range of events hosted in the space. So far, the organization has welcomed visitors for cookouts, live music, lectures, art shows, and more.
On Waldoboro Day, June 14, residents stopping by the Custom House were greeted with a large-scale map of Waldoboro and encouraged to mark specific locations on it with stickers. From marking the location of their house to a particularly beautiful spot or a place in town where memorable personal events took place, residents brought the map to life by sharing their memories and emotions, Amico said.
The mapping exercise was so successful that Amico extended the event beyond Waldoboro Day, offering the experience also during Waldoboro art walks in June and July.
Not all the activities Open House of History organizes will take place within the custom house’s walls, Amico said. He hopes to host a large portion of events throughout Waldoboro.
A community paddle in mid-July was an early success. People toured the Medomak River by kayak and heard from local residents about the river’s importance to the town’s identity and history. Open House of History, the Waldoboro Recreation Department, and citizen-led group Voices of the Medomak collaborated to bring that event to life.
Though the events that Open House of History facilitates are diverse, they are all intended to help community members understand themselves, their town, and their neighbors in new ways with history as their guide, according to Amico.
History, emotion, and community are Amico’s domain. He holds a doctorate in American studies from Yale University and later worked as a researcher at the Center for the History of Emotions at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, Germany.
Amico said he was inspired to take a turn away from academia when he realized the questions he really wanted to answer – about human connection, communication, and the reasons why people often fail to achieve both – weren’t going to be solved through reasoned argument. Rather, Amico said, he hopes that approaching those topics on a more intimate plane might be more productive.
Traditionally, people tend to come together in community around shared interests, Amico said. Inevitably, this can lead to exclusion and group-think, both of which Amico considers counterproductive to dialogue.
At Open House of History, Amico hopes to bring visitors together over something more universal: the emotions all people experience and share.
“People already share emotion,” he said. “We just don’t have a means or a language to talk about it, and certainly not a space.”
The Custom House will create that space, Amico hopes.
“I’ve just been waiting for a moment to bring all these things together,” he said. “Here’s this place where we can ask how you want to approach others … In general, it’s a space of encounter.”
Michael Amico delivers a talk on local educational pioneer Harriett Haskell at the former Waldoboro Custom House in Waldoboro on June 29. The building is now home to Amico’s nonprofit, Open House of History, through which he hopes to bring the past and present into conversation and unite locals over shared emotionality. (Sarah Masters photo)
Amico wants the new space to encourage visitors to be present and sit with their emotions, particularly with the difficult feeling of uncertainty. He hopes community members will find opportunities at the house’s events to get to know each other, which often, he said, means acknowledging how little people know about their neighbors.
Ideally, Amico hopes, what will be “on display” at the house is the heart of community itself.
He has committed to the new endeavor, signing a two-year lease on the space, and is enthusiastic about expanding programming and seeing what comes from the space’s unique approach.
During the first weeks of Open House of History’s opening, Amico invited visitors to the space to leave notes on the walls about their response to the project.
“I feel at home here,” read one Post-it note.
“I love that Waldoboro refuses to be told what, or who, it is,” read another.
Some visitors suggested possible events for the space, from community dances to potluck dinners. Amico, who is also an actor and performer, hopes to integrate more theater into the program. A theatrical adaptation of a real issue facing Waldoboro – such as the debate over pay-as-you-throw trash disposal – might shed new light on the issue itself and the emotions at play in the discussion, he said.
Amico’s journey to founding the nonprofit and articulating its mission has unfolded naturally, if unexpectedly at times, he said. So far, the work has been gratifying.
“It feels right, but I never thought it would appear this way,” he said.
Open House of History is currently in the process of determining its regular open hours, Amico said. For more information and upcoming events, go to openhouseofhistory.org.
