You need to upgrade your Flash Player
This is replaced by the Flash content.
Place your alternate content here and users without the Flash plugin or with
Javascript turned off will see this. Content here allows you to leave out
noscript
tags. Include a link to
bypass the detection if you wish.
Kentucky Gateway Museum Center Is 132 Years Old
January 1, 2010
Actually, it’s not, but the Maysville and Mason County Library, Historical and Scientific Association is! The history of the Association is fraught with change, but that only means that it is also fraught with growth. The history of the Association…and therefore of the Kentucky Gateway Museum Center…could be…and is… somewhat confusing, but actually, it’s not!
The Commonwealth of Kentucky issued a charter to the Maysville and Mason County Library, Historical and Scientific Association March 1, 1878. From that time to the present, the Association has operated under the terms of its charter with a board of trustees as the governing body. By-laws have been written and rewritten, but the purposes of the original institution remain virtually the same, that is to serve the public as a library and as a repository for collections. It has always been a not for profit or “charitable” institution which operates without any public funds or tax money. There is an occasional grant from city, county, state, or federal governing bodies, but otherwise the Association owes its support to the endowment that was established by both wise and generous founders, and that has been husbanded by wise and generous board members. It also owes its support to past and present members, fund raisers, grants, donations, and quite frankly, a little beggin’ and borrowin’!
A large part of the 132 year history of the Association deals with the buildings it has occupied. With the 1878 charter came the original building on Sutton Street (Culbertson home, razed in 1888) in front of the now Wormald Building (completed in 1881), the building which still holds 7,000 sq. ft. of the current KGMC total of 33,000.
The first librarian was the eccentric hermit William D. Hixson, affectionately called Billy by those who are convinced that his ghost occupies the old building still.
For an unknown reason, the Maysville Public Library moved into a house on Sutton Street
right next door to the old building. This was in the early 1900s. It is of interest to note that that house came all the way to the sidewalk, just as all of the other buildings beside it all the way up and down Sutton including Phillip’s Folly came up to the sidewalk. The “streetscape”, as the architects call the panoramic view of a street’s buildings, was therefore historically built up to the edge of the sidewalk. (In the illustration, observe the old building on the far right and the house with the “Public Library” sign on the front.) This point is made to show the precedent when the new KGMC was built up to the sidewalk.
In the 1950s, the John M. Hunt Estate provided the money to build a new public library for Maysville. It was built BEHIND the existing house that held the library at the time. When the new Hunt Building was finished, the houses in front of it were torn down, and it has been said that there were a lot of really surprised people. Not that many knew that a new building was even being built! The new John M. Hunt Building became the new Maysville Public Library, but it was owned and operated by the Maysville and Mason County Library, Historical and Scientific Association.
In the 1970s Kentucky wanted to make bookmobiles available to its citizens. The board of trustees of the Association, owning and operating the Maysville Public Library could not afford through its modest endowment to provide a bookmobile for this community. The board of trustees therefore proposed that a new taxing district be developed for the purpose of operating a public library…with a bookmobile!
This community wisely supported that initiative, and the Maysville Public Library was created with its own board of directors.
This action left the Association still owning the Hunt Building that it rented to the Public Library board for $1.00 a year. What this action also did was to leave the Association board with an endowment but no purpose. The old and original library building was rented to various tenants over these years….a business college, a recruiting center, a woman’s club, and a dance club, but it became apparent to this small group of active citizens that a better purpose could be found for this almost 100 year old structure.
So was born the Mason County Museum, owned and operated by the Maysville and Mason County Library, Historical and Scientific Association. It was brilliant, and it was logical, and it was an incredible leap of faith on the part of the six members of the board of trustees. Plans were created for a new front façade and a new back addition to house restrooms, workrooms, collections, and offices. They took the building as far as they had the space to take it. The architect removed a truly ugly front and matched it so completely to the very handsome sides that it is not known to most people almost thirty years later that the front is not original.
Old Billy Hixson’s plunder was gathered out of the barrels where it had been stored for years…books, ledgers, diaries, notes for a never written history of Mason County. There were original land grant deeds, original tax lists, old tools and implements, volumes and volumes of books. In other words, the Mason County Museum was ALREADY a library and a museum, the collections just had to be made accessible. There were also all of the contributions of paper and artifacts that had been made to the public library over the years by generous donors. They gave treasured possessions and many oddities. Donors took the chartered name of the institution at its face value….a museum center for library, history, and science. The new museum had books, it had reams of historical materials, and it also had a little science. Did you know that among the artifacts in the current collections is a genuine ostrich egg….and a piece of slag from an old iron furnace… and a piece of peat from the bogs of Scotland?
The Mason County Museum chugged along for twenty years, successfully operating and paying off debt, but ever so rapidly running out of space due to that very success. Next door, the Maysville Public Library was also running out of space. Their board of directors bit off their own bullet just as the Association’s board had done twenty years earlier, and with a great leap of faith and with the support of dependable tax monies, a brand new public library building was built. That move left the John M. Hunt building, still owned by the Maysville and Mason County Library, Historical and Scientific Association vacant. The Association’s board leaped at the opportunity to double its available space. Once again with a leap of faith, the buildings were connected by a corridor in the rear, staff was increased, and the museum was off and running into a new, more professional era.
Thrilled as the staff was with all of the new space, there were some problems almost immediately. Because of the way the Hunt building had been constructed, there was no way to renovate the interior. Security became an issue due to limited visibility. Storage became an issue because there still was not enough space for the paper nor for the artifact collections. The buildings’ two separate entrances caused a staffing nightmare. The old building was not handicapped accessible. Heating, ventilation, and lighting for museum collections was neither adequate nor was it correct. The main problem was that the Mason County Museum was on its way to becoming a first rate museum without the facilities to become first rate.
Enter another collector with a first rate collection but NO facility. The partnership of the Kaye Savage Browning Miniatures Collection and the Maysville and Mason County Library, Historical and Scientific Association was born. A leap of faith doesn’t even begin to describe what the Association’s board and staff and KSB Miniatures have undertaken in the last five years. A leap of faith doesn’t begin to describe what this community has undertaken in the last five years. It is now a part of the 132 year history.
Fund-raisers were hired to see if the project had a prayer of success. They deemed that it did. Volunteers were gathered to help in a massive fund-raising attempt in a small community that had already seen several other massive fund-raising attempts. Once more the generosity of the people of this area, partnered with the worth of the project, resulted in the spectacular museum that exists today in downtown Maysville, Kentucky for rural Mason, Fleming, Bracken, Lewis, Robertson, and Adams, and Brown County, Ohio.
The name was changed to Museum Center to show that this new museum served more than one county and contained more facets than before. The operations moved into the Hendrickson building, the Hunt building was razed, and a brand new, three-storied, state of the art museum building was erected. As in the renovation of the original museum building, all of space that was available was used. With the Pioneer Cemetery in the back, the old building to the right, and Phillip’s Folly to the left, the architects took the building down, up, and forward to the sidewalk….just as the first streetscape had been. This was the last and only chance to get it right, and getting it right has been the goal from the beginning.
After two years and much gnashing of teeth, the move into the new facility was made. The new name had never seemed quite right, so it was once again changed to try to capture the purpose of all of the offerings that were available in this new facility. The Kentucky Gateway Museum Center was chosen, and it has seemed to fit.
So now it is time to celebrate 132 years of history ….. at the Kentucky Gateway Museum Center ….. owned and operated by the Maysville and Mason County Library, Historical and Scientific Association!