Local history is on the move: Historical Museum prepares to relocate

Up the creaking stairs of the McMurray House — a timeless Victorian home at 1125 Broad St. that has housed the Grinnell Historical Museum for 59 years – there is now a sea of boxes, packed and labeled, a sign of history on the move. After two years of anticipation, the museum is preparing to turn the page, settling into its new home at 703 First Ave. on July 27.

“Grinnell has lived along a lot longer than just Victorian times, so there’s a lot more about Grinnell’s history that we want to share, which we can do in our new museum,” said Ann Igoe, volunteer and trustee of the museum.

The new building for the Historical Museum, purchased by the museum board in November 2022, was built in 1973 and previously housed the Uhlmann furniture store. The decision to move was partially due to the old Victorian not meeting the modern city code. 

“We’re looking forward to being able to share a lot of Grinnell history that we’ve never been able to talk about before because we’ll be able to now show it,” Igoe said. 

The museum’s collection, entirely donated, features items that tell the story of the town, such as J.B Grinnell’s desk, pictures of Grinnell before the cyclone of 1882 and goods manufactured in town.

In addition to allowing for the display of collections in an open area of approximately 8,400 square feet, the new space will include a catering kitchen and classroom spaces for events, as well as a collection room.

“Right now we work in a little office in this house that has its purposes as a conference room, a collection care room, an office. It’s a lunchroom. It’s everything. It’s the only space we can work,” Igoe said.

The museum’s board of trustees is accepting fundraising donations to Campaign 703 through the Greater Poweshiek Community Foundation. Donations will support renovations to the new museum space, enabling the creation of a dedicated area for processing and cataloging new donations, permanent displays for large agricultural artifacts and climate-controlled storage for preserved items.

Over 35 local businesses, such as Chuong Garden, Carriage House Bed & Breakfast, and McNally’s Foods, have donated to the campaign.

The museum has also implemented volunteer hours weekly to ensure they can stick to the July 27 moving date. 

“We, right now, have volunteers more than we really have room for, which is pretty spectacular, but they’re doing an archive project. We have multiple file cabinets with file folders full of documentation that hasn’t been looked at probably in 40 years. So we’re trying to sort it chronologically,” Igoe said.

During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the museum indefinitely closed its doors at its main building. Igoe said the museum’s hope is that this new building will bring back the community engagement previously held at the space. 

“In the old times, before COVID, we would do tours regularly in this house, and we had a lot of people who we called docents, who were like tour guides. And after COVID, they all just sort of went away. And we’re very hopeful that they’ll come back to the new place,” Igoe said.