Ohio History Journal

The Allen County Historical Museum

By ROBERT C. WHEELER*

 

An Allen County dream is about to become a reality. Late in

1955 the new Allen County Historical Museum will open to the

public, an event long awaited in and around Lima. Few cities in the

country can boast such facilities for preserving and interpreting their

past.

The new museum will have, in addition to ample exhibit space, an

auditorium seating 225, a local history library, and a thirty-car park-

ing area. According to James A. MacDonell, president of the Allen

County Historical Society, the museum will operate with a staff

of four--a curator, Mrs. Harry B. Longsworth, an assistant cur-

ator, a guard, and a janitor.

As an educational feature, near the museum, on a short piece

of narrow-gauge track, will rest an eighteen-ton, Lima made, Shay

locomotive. Gift of the National Lima and Stone Company and

restored by the Baldwin-Lima-Hamilton Company, the Shay will

represent Lima's oldest continuous industry. It was the Shay locomo-

tive which, in the 1880's, revolutionized the lumbering industry. The

iron work-horse of the northern forests, operating on a wooden

track, increased many fold the output of logs. This same engine

also proved to be a boon to the mining and quarrying industries.

Allen County's new museum actually began in the minds of its

citizens back in 1938, when members of the historical society dis-

cussed the need for a new historical museum. Through the years

a collection of museum objects had been housed on the upper

floor of Lima's Memorial Hall. The historical society was grateful

 

* Robert C. Wheeler is field representative of the Ohio Historical Society.

 

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ALLEN COUNTY HISTORICAL MUSEUM        209

 

for this makeshift home, but their dream was for a beautiful, ef-

ficient, modern museum building.

Early in 1941 it was decided that funds should be raised by public

subscription for such a museum. The job of raising the funds was

contracted to the American City Bureau of Chicago for a fee of

$5,000. The amount of the fee was a private donation made for the

express purpose of carrying on the campaign. Eighty-five thousand

dollars was pledged or donated, and the building to house the

heating unit and the storage was built. The erection of the main

building, however, was delayed by war and inflation. The collected

funds were placed in several local building and loan firms and banks

and in United States bonds. At least the money was put to work,

and so ended 1941, '42, '43, and '44.

At the close of World War II the members of the Allen County

Historical Society again considered building the new museum, but

they found to their dismay that $85,000 in 1946 would do only

half of what it would have done in 1941--hardly enough to begin.

A $10,000-a-year goal was achieved until the fund reached a point

where it appeared that another fund raising campaign, with $45,-

000 as its goal, would permit the erection of the building in the

size originally planned. Organizations were promised the auditorium

as a meeting place, donors were promised recognition, and so forth.

Finally, on November 11, 1953, the contract was let. On Novem-

ber 17 construction began, and on the following Flag Day, June 11,

1954, the cornerstone was laid with appropriate ceremony.

The spring and summer of this year will be especially busy for the

museum people of Allen County, for now before them lies the tre-

mendous task of moving and installing exhibits. All Ohio wishes

Lima and Allen County well in this exceptional community project.

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