Welcome to the North Tonawanda History Museum Online!
As a museum of North Tonawanda’s history, we are still in our infancy, but our objective is to share the rich history of our wonderful little city with a small town atmosphere with our younger generations of present residents, the many former residents who still consider themselves NT'ers, students and researchers of all ages--and just anyone who has an interest in the history of our community. We describe North Tonawanda as “the best little city in New York.”
The North Tonawanda History Museum began as a grassroots interest group of dedicated individuals on September 10, 2003, at a meeting hosted at City Hall by Mayor David J. Burgio, New York State Senator George D. Maziarz, Niagara County Legislator William M. Davignon, and myself. There were 23 people present. I was asked to coordinate the effort to begin creation of a museum of the history of North Tonawanda. All of our elected officials at local, County, State, and the Federal level have supported our volunteer effort to tell the story of North Tonawanda's rich ethnic and industrial heritage, both magnified by our unbelievable location at the junction of the historic Erie Canal and the mighty Niagara River.
By October 9, 2003, we had developed a steering committee which transformed into a Board of Trustees. The outpouring of response to our fledgling effort has been amazing. We began fundraising efforts and planning for a future museum, envisioning it would take years. We held meetings of the Board of Trustees every two weeks until the beginning of May 2004, monthly since then. We held interest group meetings and then membership meetings after our charter was issued on a monthly basis.
We have participated actively in our city's activities and events and have participated in numerous joint efforts with our civic and community organizations. Since March 29, 2004, we have produced a weekly column in the Tonawanda News, “Remembering Yesteryear,” on Mondays, the focus of which is local history of all varieties. We have attempted to actively involve the youth of our community in activities and are developing numerous initiatives for the future for the involvement of the community at large. We have successfully accomplished a great deal in a relatively short time.
We were granted a Provisional Charter from the Board of Regents of the State of New York on April 20, 2004. We received approval as a 501(c)(3) organization from the Internal Revenue Service retroactive to that date. We had created a real functioning museum in eight months without a building!
We are an all-volunteer organization. In October 2004, we opened a startup museum and offices at 314 Oliver Street, in the original Adams Bakery building, courtesy of North Tonawanda businessman, David Zobrist. Volunteers donated paint and materials and put in countless hours cleaning up, fixing up, and readying the facility for occupancy. Volunteers then moved all the accumulated materials and furnishings and equipment from the homes of the Trustees into the museum. We held an Open House during Winter Walk in December 2004.
We hope that this will be our home while we continue to develop plans for our future permanent interactive museum and history center. We have identified the ideal permanent home and are actively pursuing making it a reality. See information on “The Future of Our Past” Capital Fund under Membership & Other Participation. We are open Mondays from 9 to 9 p.m., Tuesdays from 9 to 9 p.m., Thursdays from 9 to 5 p.m., and Fridays from 9 to noon. We are also available by appointment. Do come visit when you are in the area!
We are now busy showing visitors our facilities and sharing our vision, accepting donation of items for the collections, training our volunteer office staff, setting up our collection records and administrative files, learning to use new museum software, developing solid repetitive fundraising initiatives so that we can continue our programming, and launching a number of exciting efforts we hope will benefit North Tonawanda and its residents as well as our own organization. We have events a plenty lined up and the community is enthusiastically involved in our promotion of history. We are taking a solid leadership role in promoting the history of our City and helping to restore its historic identity.
Our online museum began in mid-October 2003, created and maintained by a wonderful dedicated volunteer until June 2004. Theresa Carpentieri put in countless hours daily on the website, something almost impossible to duplicate with volunteer service. However, the website developed without us planning for or even imagining its potential. Since June 2004, your Board of Trustees has been busy with many other vital efforts necessary as a brand new actual museum.
We are pleased to now have a new local web host for the site, Wizard Communications. We have devoted countless hours to analyzing our long-range objectives for the website. We came to realize how complex the project actually is. If we had known this before we began in October 2003, we probably would never have attempted it until we had established the actual museum. Our Webmaster is now John P. Zellner Neal, who has labored as a volunteer alongside the Board of Trustees since October 2003. Beginning in February 2005, John has worked with the Board of Trustees to create a website that would fulfill the expectations of the visitors to the site and the actual museum.
We believe we have now made tremendous improvements in the presentation of our information and accessibility to the data. We have a significant amount of further work to complete but are now pleased to be able to invite you to explore our site and enjoy our City's history.
We are hard at work on joint initiatives with the North Tonawanda Public Library, the Herschell Carrousel Factory Museum, the City Historian's office, and the North Tonawanda School District, aimed at making our City's recorded history eventually accessible digitally to the greatest extent possible. The transition has been painful for many of the visitors to our site who are at a distance and have had no concept of the amount of effort the overall museum startup and the review of the potential for the website has required.
We hope to be able to present our accomplishments and future activities as well as the historical data in such as way that those of you at a distance will feel you are really a part of our museum and will consider it your museum
We hope that you will find a visit to our online museum a resource and a respite from today's current events and hectic lifestyles. We look forward to hearing from you all personally. Everyone receives personal replies from museum staff.
Donna Zellner Neal