The U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) has designated two Connecticut sites as national historic landmarks.

The James Merrill House in Stonington and the Steward’s House in Cornwall were among 10 sites across the country selected for the designation this week. According to the DOI, properties with “exceptional value to the nation” are given the designation, aimed at cultural preservation.

The James Merrill House is associated with one of the most significant American writers of the second half of the 20th century, its namesake. During Merrill’s lifetime he published 13 collections of poems, as well as novels and plays, prose and a memoir, which won every major award for poetry in the U.S. Over time, he introduced more radical material into his poetry, including well-crafted examination about homosexuality, art and spiritualism.

The Steward’s House Foreign Mission School (FMS) was the first and last experiment in a domestically located “foreign” mission and represents educational and social politics concerning racial tolerance, Asian and Native American migration, and American identity in the early 19th century. The Steward’s House was part of a three-building complex that provided an evangelical education for over 100 students from approximately 30 different nations, primarily Asia, the Pacific Islands and North America. The interracial marriages of two FMS students with local white women evoked a substantial public response and brought early 19th-century assumptions about race-mixing into the open, providing a context for national conversations on race and religion in the early 19th century.

“Connecticut has a long and rich history as a cultural destination, with a revolutionary spirit that has led the nation and continues to this day,” Gov. Dannel P. Malloy said in a statement. “The designation of these two sites today as national historic landmarks is particularly notable, given our state’s history as a leader on issues concerning civil rights – especially in regards to racial justice and equal rights for our LGBT brothers and sisters. We are proud of this revolutionary spirit, and are grateful to have this history acknowledged and celebrated for years to come.”