Mineola’s historians are making moves to grow their space to show off more of the village’s history. More space, they say, is desperately needed.
Historical Society President Thomas Murtha and Vice President Margaret Ann Farmer said their current space, which sits on the edge of Wilson Park, is bursting at the seams with historical artifacts, photographs and records, making it difficult for residents to properly view the collection, researchers to find what they need and the organization to collect everything that comes their way.
“When you look around, we’re full,” Farmer said. “There’s very limited space to put more donated items. And we’re always getting donated items.”
Murtha and Farmer hope for an expansion that would add an additional room to the space they’ve occupied since the late ‘90s. Currently, their building is shaped like the letter L. Murtha’s and Farmer’s dream is for that empty corner to be filled in with an expansion, making the building a full rectangle.
There’s a chance their dream might come true. The village just approved $29,000 for an engineering assessment of potential renovations to the space. MAYOR? Pereira said the assessment will tell the village what type of improvements would be necessary, feasible and how much each part of the work would cost.
Farmer said she hopes engineers will come at some point in the fall to complete their assessment and for any potential work to start next year.
“Not only would an expansion give us just more museum space, but it would give us a place to have bookshelves where people could come in and do research,” Farmer said. “We’d love to have dedicated bookshelves for yearbooks and other history books because we’ve had researchers come in.”
She said an expansion would also provide more wall space for photographs and other artifacts to be taken out of boxes or more prominently displayed and could provide the team with the freedom to create rotating exhibits and welcome more visitors into the museum.
“We want to be able to open up the space for more people,” Farmer said. “We would love to be able to do some historical programming if we had that space.”
Farmer said even if the village decides a full expansion is too costly, minor renovations to improve building conditions, add in non-water-based fire suppression systems and increase storage would be helpful to the organization.
“Just a little bit more space or renovations would give us room to reconfigure.” Farmer said. “There’s no access to certain items, so we have to be selective in what we can show to the best of the space that we have available. There’s a lot of stuff back there you can’t see. We truly appreciate the generosity in donations that has caused us to be bursting at the seams, because that means people are interested in history.
“It’s really for the village to decide what’s in their budget. Our dream is to get a beautiful, new multi-functioning room,” Farmer continued. “We’re crossing our fingers.”
