The Otago Community Trust has awarded Janet Frame House $23,500 to preserve and further enhance the childhood home of the late and critically acclaimed author.
It will be principally used for a new visitor reception project to be built at her former childhood home at 56 Eden St.
Frame was born in Dunedin in 1924 and lived at the property during the 1930s and 1940s.
The Janet Frame Eden Street Trust took ownership in the early 2000s, opening it to the public in 2005 after it was returned to a likeness of the Frame family era.
Frame, who died in 2004, and her sister June had been involved with the trust in the initial work.
Trust chairwoman Chloe Searle said they were "absolutely thrilled" at being named again as an Otago Community Trust recipient following earlier generous support.
The Eden Street trust in the past few years had envisaged a purpose-built visitor reception area on the site of an old garage at the front of the property.
Ms Searle said the trust had not taken it for granted but had hoped the latest funding would get it over the line for the planned $75,000 visitor
project.
It hoped also to return the front room of the house — now used for visitor reception and administration — to its original appearance as the Frame parents’ bedroom once the new building was completed, she said.
"The garage will be replaced with a shed-type space, which will become a visitor centre ... That means that the front room, which is currently the visitor centre, we’ll return that as much as we can."
The trust planned to undertake the project next year, Ms Searle said.
It should give visitors a more authentic, immersive experience on entering the house.
"We’re looking forward to giving visitors that experience of the house as it was, as soon as the visitor steps through the door, so the house is that step back in time."
Meanwhile, the house is now open daily to the end of April, from 2pm-4pm.
Ms Searle said the house, now in its 20th year as a public attraction, continued to draw a large following of both New Zealand and international visitors in Oamaru.
