 Children like to deposit, and then retrieve, coins from this farebox which used to serve an old Royal Oak streetcar. Transition By - Muriel Versagi, Curator Readers of this column are among those who approach me in the supermarket or hardware store to ask how the museum’s move to the Northwood fire station is going. My answer is that we are in transition. Volunteers are cleaning and painting the kitchen or sanding and polishing floors while we go through the architectural, engineering, and contracting steps required to make the building comply with construction codes. It will be several months before we can move in. The interim museum housed at the Churchill Community Education Center, although in a bit of disarray caused by preliminary packing to prepare for the move, continues to draw visitors, and we have added interactivity to make those visits meaningful and fun. Mothers and fathers who bring children to the Suzuki School of Music housed at Churchill occasionally discover our museum down the hall. Sometimes the parents walk in alone, sometimes with their son or daughter. In either case, they add color to our day. Interactive exhibit for the kids Children especially like to play with the 1930s-40s streetcar fare box. Following printed instructions, they count the several nearby coins and plunk them into the top of the fare box. Then, as the conductor would, they press a lever which drops the coins into the contraption. They turn a hand crank until they no longer hear coins falling into the bottom of the box. Finally, they push open a spring door and retrieve the pennies and nickels. Youngsters also like to sit in an elementary school desk, placed near George Dondero’s desk in the museum’s reference corner. While they sit there, I or another volunteer will ring a classroom bell from the old Franklin School to indicate class is over. Interactive exhibit for grownups Many adults like to sit at our Visitor’s Computer which contains hundreds of historic Royal Oak photographs grouped by decade. Depending on their age or interest in local history, they can choose to view pictures from as early as the late 1800s. Interactivity comes from their ability to add or modify brief text descriptions for each photograph. For adults, interactivity also takes the form of looking at objects, maps, documents, and photos on display and recalling their own or their family’s experiences. The resulting conversations often result to their agreeing to provide oral or written memories to add to the informal family histories we compile as an ongoing activity. A side note: Many of the artifacts in our collection were purchased from William Rasmussen, who was a former Royal Oak policeman, a Historical Society director, and who operated a store in which he sold historic artifacts. One inconvenience at Churchill is that security requires an uncertain schedule of locking the building’s doors and requiring identification to gain access. That causes us to suggest that prospective visitors call to let us know they are coming, so we can make arrangements for them to be admitted. Custodians Martha Webster and Joann Brooks regularly help us overcome that inconvenience and with other facility-related matters. To volunteer or to schedule a museum visit, contact Muriel Versagi, curator of the Royal Oak Historical Society Museum, at 248.439.1501 or mversagi@versagivoice.com Back to Current News. |