Norcross City Officials Attempt to Demoralize Grassroots Group’s Efforts to Lease a City-owned Historic House for Museum

In a letter dated February 6, 2008 to Norcross History Center Museum Director Anne Webb, Mayor Bucky Johnson and Councilmember Charlie Riehm announced the city’s intent to use the 189 Lawrenceville Street brick house as a Welcome Center and multi-purpose offices.

“We were a little surprised by the mayor’s letter,” said Webb, “as we were engaged in discussions with the city for two years while developing the museum, and had no reason to believe we would not get one of the houses.”

There was no public discussion or council vote on the matter.

The Lawrenceville Street house was identified by former city manager Warren Hutmacher as one of two city-owned historic properties best suited for The Norcross History Center‘s Museum and Archives collection. The other is the historic 100-year old Rectory next to the historic Methodist Church. The History Center hoped to lease one of these properties from the city for $1 a year for the museum.

Under the city’s new scheme, a store front-type museum would be run by a city employee, and not under the control of the Norcross History Center Board of Directors. In addition, the NHC board could not schedule its own volunteers to serve as docents, according to the mayor’s letter.

The NHC Museum Director explained her concern that a multi-use, multi-purpose building cannot be used to house a museum with real artifacts such as family heirlooms, period furnishings, documents, and memorabilia because of liability issues and insurance difficulties. Other concerns are limited space in the 4-room house to house display cases for exhibits, as well as space needed to house the Baseball Association’s 8 large memorabilia cases.

The museum has more parking needs than a Welcome Center and city offices. People in cars, vans and school buses can arrive en masse to a museum event and must share a driveway with the fire station on the busy Lawrenceville Street curve.

“We can see the building as a Welcome Center and see the need for various offices such as a DDA office, a Main Street Coordinator, and a developer office such as the Cemetery Street Lofts. We do hope the city will hang historic photographs throughout the building, and we hope we are asked to help,” Webb said.

The History Center Board received start-up funding from the city of Norcross in 2007, and donations from Art Fest and The Woman’s Club in 2008 in honor of the late Irene Ewing Crapo.

The Norcross History Center, now a 501c3 nonprofit, is involved in a year-long project researching and filming oral histories of long- time residents as part of the program created in honor of Crapo and the late Martha Miller Adams, both Woman’s Club past-presidents, co-authors of the book NORCROSS, and Founding Board members of the Norcross History Center, Inc.

The Norcross History Center Museum’s Traveling, Rotating exhibit will be shown at the Duluth Museum that is moving next month to its new location in the historic 100-year old Alice Strickland House on Old Atlanta (Buford) Highway, just 4 miles above Norcross. Formerly the home of the first female mayor in Georgia, the house sits on 5 acres of historic grounds and gardens.

For more information, visit the NHC website www.norcrosshistorycenter.org.