Faith, Fellowship & Civic Life: Greenville Village’s Gathering Places

Join us for our third annual Jane’s Walk—a 1.6-mile exterior walking tour through Greenville Village led by Luke Muzzy, Executive Director of the Moosehead Historical Society. We’ll gather at the Center for Moosehead History and spend 90 minutes exploring the buildings and places that shaped civic, religious, and social life in Greenville from the 1850s through the 1930s.

As the United States marks its 250th birthday, we’re reminded that the American story isn’t just written in capitals and courthouses — it’s written in places like Greenville, in the schools that educated our children, the churches where neighbors gathered, the fraternal halls where civic life took shape, and the fields where a community came together to play.

Along the way we’ll stop at more than a dozen sites, including the Greenville Union Church (founded in 1859 as a meeting house), the Shaw Block (whose upper floors once hosted lodge rooms, dances, and school events), the Odd Fellows Hall (active for nearly seven decades before being lost to fire in 2002), and a high school campus on Pritham Avenue that saw three successive buildings between 1902 and 1935. We’ll also visit Oliver’s Field — donated in 1911 in memory of a boy who loved baseball, and a gathering place for the whole community for two decades.

Attendees will come away with a deeper understanding of how a small lakeside village built its institutions from the ground up—and how those institutions connect to the broader American story we celebrate this year.

Wear comfortable shoes and dress for the weather—early May in Greenville can surprise you. The walk proceeds rain or shine.