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Annual Report

Three circles showing LLA missions: history, community, and discussion

2024-2025 Annual Report

View and download the FY 2024-2025 Annual Report PDF

View and download the FY 2023-2024 Annual Report PDF

Lexington Lyceum Advocates is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization 

Our mission is to prepare for a modern lyceum, history interpretation center, and community gathering space at the renovated Ellen Stone Building. We envision the Stone Building as a venue to learn from the past and shape the future. 

Achievements

From July 2024-June 2025, the Lexington Lyceum Advocates

  • Welcomed more than 830 people at 19 events
  • Was awarded 1 grants totaling $1,875,
  • and collaborated with 12 community partners

… to support renovating the Ellen Stone Building and envision future programming there.

Financials

In 2024-2025, LLA received

  • $1,875 in grants
  • $20,685 in donations from 166 donors
  • $3,335 in event ticket donations

… for a total of $24,020 with $18,071 in programming & operating expenses.

LLA Display Table at East Village Fair 2023
International Fun Fest at Stone Building 2023

Programming

In keeping with the programming of the original lyceum to educate and entertain, the LLA set up a variety of related events, including:

  • 2 Lyceum Conversations: Join or Die • Unfold the Future
  • 6 History Lectures and Tours: Reconstruction and the Moral Sense of the Nation • Liberty is Sweet • Days of Danger • Julia Robbins and Nonconformity • Robbins Cemetery • Why is there an Ellen Stone Building?
  • 1 Interactive History Event: Douglass Day transcription
  • 4 Community Events: MLK Illumination Night • Immigration and Community Safety • The Dream and the Doorway • Lexington Candidates’ Forum

… and public outreach at the Bikeway Block Party, Porchfest, East Village Fair, Patriots Day’ Parade, Discovery Day, and Voices on the Green

Partners

Thank you to all our event co-sponsors this year!

Association of Black Citizens of Lexington • CAAL • CALex • First Parish • Follen Congregation • Indian Americans of Lexington • Lexington History Museums  • Lexington Human Rights Committee • Lexington Observer • Lexington Public Schools • Lexington Youth STEAM Initiative • Munroe Center for the Arts • Native Americans of Lexington • Simon W. Robinson Lodge A.F. & A.M 

History

  • 1829 First Lyceum opens in Lexington
  • 1833: Eli Robbins builds a Lyceum Hall in East Lexington for his workers and neighbors.
  • 1830s-1860s: Building hosts notable presentations and debates — including 60+ lectures by Transcendentalist leader Ralph Waldo Emerson — on wide-ranging topics and gives Abolitionist societies a place to meet and speak freely.
  • 1892: Ellen Stone, Eli’s granddaughter, deeds the building to the Town of Lexington.
  • 1895-2007: Stone Building is used as East Lexington Branch Library until a flood from a burst pipe.
  • 2022: Town committee recommends returning building to its former use as a Lyceum and intercultural community gathering space after 15 years of dormancy.
  • 2022: A group of local citizens forms the Lexington Lyceum Advocates to promote the ideals for how the Ellen Stone Building might be used once renovated.
  • 2023: Town Meeting approves $400,000 to prepare designs and cost estimates for building reuse. 
  • 2025: You get involved to help bring this treasure back to life.
LLA – FY25 annual report – reduced file sizeDownload