PORT TOWNSEND — A $200,000 grant has jump-started a funding drive to build an addition to the Jefferson County Historical Society Research Center in 2011.
The challenge grant from the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust of Vancouver, Wash., “puts us in a position to launch a campaign to ‘top off’ the project and build the [first phase of the] facility next year,” said Bill Tennent, historical society executive director.
The first phase is a 7,800-square-foot two-story steel structure adjacent to the current 2,000-square-foot research center on a 4-acre site at 13694 Airport Cutoff Road, which is state Highway 19.
In the future, the second phase would add another 2,200 square feet.
“We want to put everything in one place,” Tennent said.
“All our items are spread around and in storage,” he said.
“Once we have the new building, people who are interested in research will have fast access to the information they need.”
When the expansion is completed, the center is expected to house more than half a million historical documents, 20,000 historical photographs and thousands of three-dimensional artifacts ranging from buttons to farm equipment.
The estimated cost of the first phase of the new facility is $1.25 million. In addition to the new grant, the historical society has raised all but $200,000.
Now the group must meet the requirements of the “challenge grant”: that an equal amount be raised by the recipient.
That puts the museum on a tight schedule, since $200,000 must be pledged by Jan. 1.
“By meeting this challenge, we can ensure that Jefferson County’s cultural heritage of priceless treasures will be preserved and accessible for generations to come,” Tennent said.
Money pledged must be received by next August to complete the project in 2011, a timeline required by a state Heritage Capital Projects Fund grant of $450,000, Tennent said.
Other donations to the project have been $350,000 from the Jefferson County Genealogical Society through the Seattle Foundation, and a $50,000 behest from the Levin Estate.
The original plan was to complete the project this month, but federal and state funding fell through, Tennent said.
“We are really only six or eight months behind our projections,” he said.
“So for a building project, we are pretty much on track.”
Another compromise has been the design.
Initially, architect Jim Rozanski created a ‘green’ building using a round grain silo construction “which is economical and sustainable and honors Jefferson County’s agricultural heritage,” Tennent said two years ago.
But with cutbacks, the silo is now gone.
The expansion still will include a large display space and a climate-controlled document storage room, among other advantages.
The historical society now has artifacts and other items in multiple places in Fort Worden State Park as well as in its main branch downtown, the Rothschild House uptown, the visitor center at the corner of state Highways 19 and 104 and the research center.
Some 15,000 historical items are stored in space donated at Fort Worden.
This will soon change.
Fort Worden must take back the storage space for other projects, and even if this were not the case, the stored materials should be moved.
“It’s not an ideal place to store old documents,” Tennent said.
“The temperature isn’t right for storage and there are animals and mildew that will cause degradation, so we do need to move these collections.”
The artifacts that will be moved from Fort Worden for display at the new facility are “100 percent unique,” Tennent said.
The center is open five days a week.
“We have a lot of genealogical information, so the local genealogical society comes in here to do research,” Tennent said.
“We got them to volunteer, which is why we can stay open.”
The information contained in the research center, which Tennent calls “the brains of the museum,” is often detailed and arcane.
New items arrive regularly, such as the pile of ledgers donated by the Jefferson County Treasurer that were “sitting on top of a safe for years,” Tennent said.
But these items can be invaluable for a person researching his family’s past, or who wants to know more about the house in which he lives.
“It can be hard to explain the importance of some of this material, since it is all behind the scenes,” said archivist Marsha Moratti.
“But you don’t know how much you need these items until you are looking for something specific.”
The Jefferson County Historical Society Research Center is open from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. Admission is $4 per adult and $1 per child.
Donations of any amount to the building fund are welcome, Tennent said, adding that room-naming opportunities are available for major donors.
Checks payable to JCHS Capital Campaign can be sent to 540 Water St., Port Townsend, WA 98368.
Contributions also can be made online at www.jchsmuseum.org.
For more information, phone 360-379-6673.
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Jefferson County Reporter Charlie Bermant can be reached at 360-385-2335 or charlie.bermant@peninsuladailynews.com.
