History Museum receives $50k grant from state
A $50,000 state of Tennessee grant will help the Oak Ridge History Museum resurface and reline its parking lot.
The museum is at 102 Robertsville Road at the historic Wildcat Den building, and serves as an early voting site.
It features photos, artifacts and replica buildings showing everyday life in 1940s Oak Ridge.
The Oak Ridge Heritage and Preservation Association, a private nonprofit, runs the museum through volunteers, and works to preserve other historic buildings as well.
Museum President Kathy Kelly said the facility has not set the date yet for when the paving will begin. She described it as a plus for people using the building, including for early voting.
The grant is part of a $5 million state fund through the 2024-25 Appropriations Act to help nonprofit or governmentally run museums.
Of the 157 that applied, full or partial awards went to 83 museums across the state, in 43 counties.
“We are thrilled to have received this grant,” Kelly said. “Repaving our parking lot has been a priority of the [museum].
“As a nonprofit that relies on donations, museum admissions and event rentals for revenue, $50,000 is a huge gift that allows us to make these needed repairs now.”
New exhibits
Separate from this funding, Oak Ridge History Museum is hoping to add four new exhibit rooms with different focuses.
Karla Mullins, museum coordinator, told The Courier News that one of the new rooms will show a World War II-era Oak Ridge home’s kitchen with stainless-steel sink and countertop, along with dishes and an apron from that era.
Kelly said it will also contain a period washing machine.
Another room will show a classroom from the 1940s.
The museum is working with the Oak Ridge Civic Music Association on a room in which visitors can play recordings of 1940s music.
It is looking for artwork done by Oak Ridge residents in the 1940s and ‘50s for the art room.
Kelly said she was specifically looking for people to donate items related to the beginning of the Oak Ridge Art Center and the Oak Ridge Symphony Orchestra.
Mullins said she would like to complete these rooms by the end of the year.
Before 2023, the museum had leased these rooms to other tenants. After that year, though no one was interested.
A pipe burst due to a snowstorm at the museum last January, causing water damage. Mullins said the damage affected two of the rooms that the museum is now remodeling.
So far, Mullins said, the museum has watercolors and a painting depicting Girl Scouts in early Oak Ridge.
She said she hoped to include some wood carvings by Bill Henry.
With the music room, Mullins said the museum already has “hundreds” of albums from The Music Box, a store that previously existed in Oak Ridge.
The room will let visitors play these records on a record player.
All artifact donations must be accompanied by a deed or gift form. To download those and for more information on the donation process, go to oakridgeheritage.com/artifact-donation/.
AmeriCorps
impressions
The water damage affected carpets in the museum’s non-display working kitchen and restroom, but volunteers have restored those areas.
A group of volunteers from the federal AmeriCorps program came in September to help re-assemble the museum’s kitchen’s cabinets, another part of the restoration after the water damage.
“They’ve been wonderful, just wonderful,” said Mullins.
She said the young AmeriCorps volunteers helped the museum’s older volunteers with tasks that would have taken longer otherwise.
The team also worked with the Manhattan Project National Historic Park at the Children’s Museum of Oak Ridge.
“We’ve very much enjoyed the town; it’s very pretty and we all like coming down,” Lucas Wertheimer, a volunteer the AmeriCorps team, said. “There’s a lot of history that most of us were unfamiliar with when we came here, and so every time we come down to Oak Ridge, we learn something new.”
