History Museum has new home

by Joseph Kimpflen

After 20 years as a nomad, the Tupper Lake History Museum now has a home to call its own. Following a lengthy search process, museum leaders last week closed on the purchase of a property on upper Park Street. Known to longtime Tupper Lakers as the Sarvis Building, the one-time garage was most recently the home of a Tex-Mex restaurant and a haircutting business. It has been vacant for the past year.

While the new property will require significant work to make it ready to host visitors, museum board members are enthusiastic about its potential.

In Vice President Dian Connor’s words, “Now we can look forward to creating a welcoming place for people to visit us and room for us to display our exhibits, and also room to grow.”

Strategically located on the eastern entrance to the village, it is also expected to be a new welcome center, staffed by knowledgeable museum volunteers.

Among the features that attracted the museum board’s interest to the property were: its location, clearly visible on a main route into town; the building’s fundamentally sound physical condition; ample parking; and a good amount of potentially usable exhibit space for the price. Board members had looked carefully at other options, especially in the Junction neighborhoods, where the museum has been housed in recent years, but found nothing comparable available.

The purchase ends a challenging period in the museum’s long history. In 2018, the museum leaders had to move out of the old Junction firehouse, its home for a number of years, due to structural problems and the town board’s decision to sell the property.

Invited by Next Stop Tupper Lake! to occupy the rebuilt but partially empty train station, the museum and its volunteers enjoyed their most successful three years ever there, hosting hundreds of residents and visitors, despite COVID-related challenges. In January of this year, however, the museum had to move again, to make way for the return of passenger trains and the new rail bikes to the station. The rail bike operation opened earlier this month and trains are expected next summer.

Since the January move the museum’s large collection of artifacts, photos, documents and display cases have been in storage, while the board of trustees, led by President Kathleen Lefebvre, focused on locating a permanent home and raising money for a down payment. Despite its homeless state, the museum volunteers were able to contribute artifacts to this summer’s highly successful Tupper Arts exhibit on logging, orchestrated by museum board member Jim Lanthier.

The recent purchase was made possible by a successful fundraising campaign, the progress of which since the beginning of 2022 was reported in these pages.

Board President Kathleen Lefebvre said “the outpouring of support for our capital campaign was overwhelming. We received many gifts from residents as well as from many visitors who had strong ties to Tupper Lake. Many of those gifts came with notes of support and encouragement to continue our efforts. One in particular said they left Tupper Lake in 1951 “but Tupper Lake never left them.”

Mrs. Lefebvre also expressed her board’s appreciation to the Next Stop! Tupper Lake group for its generous loan of the train station quarters to house the museum these past three years when the museum saw very high visitation numbers, despite the pandemic.

A major kick-off to the campaign was a $12,000 gift from Next Stop! Tupper Lake, and Mrs. Lefebvre expressed her appreciation for that as well.

As Mrs. Connor put it, “We are extremely thankful for all the monetary donations we have received that will help us in our endeavors.” The campaign, to which local residents responded generously, got a second big boost in April, when Art Richer Jr., son of the Museum’s founder, jump-started the effort with a matching pledge. The museum has also benefited from grants from the Aseel Fund and the Adirondack Foundation.

Museum officials are aware that more fundraising work lies ahead, with an initial focus on paying off the mortgage on the new property as quickly as possible. Board members are currently selling tickets for a 50/50 drawing to be held this weekend, and other fundraising projects are in the planning stage. The museum organization last year gained status as a 501(c)3 not-for-profit, tax-exempt entity, making all contributions tax deductible.

As of this writing, the museum board was laying plans for what will be a busy fall and winter season. The all-volunteer workforce will be painting, weeding, rearranging the interior, and ultimately bringing in the museum’s exhibits to create displays. With lots of creative work to be done, the museum welcomes new volunteers as it begins this new phase of its life; anyone interested in getting involved should contact a board member, visit the Museum Facebook page, send an email (TLHistoryMuseum@gmail.com), or call Vice President Dian Connor at 518-359-2126.

-Joe Kimpflen is the secretary of the History Museum’s Board of Trustees.