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Work Underway to Restore ITM Welcome Center

GRINNEL HERALD REGISTER • August 1, 2005
by Jennifer Hass – Staff Writer

Restoration crews are busy repairing the future welcome center for the Iowa Transportation Museum – known locally as the Old Legion Hall – where water damage caused a roof and partial wall collapse earlier this year. It is located at the intersection of Spring Street and Fourth Avenue and was built in 1903. Large concrete blocks now fill in the space on the north side of the building, which will make up the inner portion of the wall. A masonry crew has also replaced some of the bricks that match the outer wall.

    “Our hope is that the building will eventually look virtually identical to how it looked before May 11, when it caved in,” said John Swanson, executive director of the museum. The work being done on the interior and exterior of the building will cost at least $500,000, it is estimated, and the building should be open to the public by late in 2006. This is the beginning of a $20 million project that will bring the Spaulding Center for Transportation to Grinnell – $3.6 million of which is coming from a federal transportation bill, it was announced Friday. It will include the welcome center and museum along with a restoration laboratory and a research center. The center’s name comes from Spaulding Carriage and Automotive Works, which made 10,000 buggies a year around the turn of the century and made nearly 1,500 automobiles before closing in 1916.

    The three buildings at the Spaulding site are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. They offer a total of 125,000 square feet of space.

    The Galena, Ill.-based company Renaissance Restoration is working to make the welcome center – which will also likely include administrative offices – inhabitable. With work on the northern wall complete, the crew will next rebuild the southern wall, which bulges outward, and replace the building’s parapet and roof. Steel trusses will replace the wooden infrastructure, which will help weatherproof the building. The exterior work is expected to be completed within two to three months, Swanson said. Interior work will follow. The latter will involve everything from rebuilding wood floors and addressing mold problems to restoring tin ceiling panels and sprucing up existing architectural elements. A marble mantel piece was recently discovered from the turn of the century, for instance, which museum visitors will find “very striking,” Swanson said. It had been stashed above the existing parapet by a previous owner. Swanson and the museum’s board members are also working at this time to hire a design firm that will lay out what the site will look like and what it should include. The board will likely approve a design company at its Aug. 16 meeting.