Making Lewiston’s history more hip
Renovated museum debuts in style today
Published: June 03, 2009, 12:30 am
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LEWISTON — Sleek and sophisticated but still very old-fashioned, the 35-year-old Lewiston Museum is reopening today after a major renovation.
At a cost of $70,000, it took two years to remake the museum at 469 Plain St., a converted church that dates from 1835.
The work was paid for with $53,000 in grant money and $17,000 raised from Historic Home Tours — and helped along by hundreds of volunteer work hours.
The museum will be open from 1:30 to 5:30 p. m. Wednesdays to Sundays until the end of August.
Gone are the asphalt floors, old display cases and wallboard that covered the original wooden floors and stained-glass windows.
Also gone are walls lined with radiators. They have been replaced by walls lined with DVD players, which will eventually give visitors snippets of history. One video tells the story of Josiah Tryon and the history of the Underground Railroad, and five more videos are planned.
Ticker tape-style sound bites beginning with “Where Niagara Falls was born 12,000 years ago . . .” tell the history of Lewiston and line the ceiling as part of a custom wallpaper collection created for the museum by Keystone Printing of Buffalo. Additional prints along the wall show the village’s main thoroughfare, Center Street, 50 years ago and 100 years ago.
Giant foam board and Plexiglas prints outline some of the outstanding historical snapshots of history, such as the War of 1812 and the Underground Railroad.
“Our members were anxious for it to get done,” museum Director Pamela Hauth said. “We never intended to be closed for two years. It was an ambitious project, and all of our people, except me, are volunteers. It was a lot of hard work.”
Hauth said the newly renovated wooden floor took lots of effort. Paint had to be stripped off after the asphalt was removed. But now, Hauth said, you can see the nail holes where the pews once stood in the church in the 19th century.
Hauth said that it feels more like a church now. It’s open, airy.
“Less is more,” said Diane Finkbeiner, president of the board of trustees. “In the past, [the look] really interfered with the architecture of the building. The message wasn’t about the artifacts, but about the history of Lewiston. Now, though, we have even better artifacts.”
Museum officials plan to have fewer display cases but to rotate exhibits.
“We want them to keep [coming] back,” Hauth said. “We have so many different elements of Lewiston that we can tell. It was all display-orientated before. Now we have an element of technology and can appeal to younger people. It’s important for young people to know where we came from. It’s a little sleeker and more sophisticated.”
“People learn and absorb differently,” Finkbeiner added. “You have to engage people and remind people what it was like.
“We did not engage a professional. We had a vision, and that’s why we have quirky things like ceiling runner [which gives the ticker-tape effect.] And kids will love it. Pam spent days and days on a scaffold putting it up.”
“Lewiston was one of the most important settlements in the New World,” Hauth said, “until modern transportation changed that. Lewiston was it.”
nfischer@buffnews.com
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