Editorial: Let's find a home for the Beacon Historical Society

A Home for History

For 28 years—since 1976—the Beacon Historical Society has collected, catalogued, and pieced together a history of the City of Beacon, capturing personal histories, gathering photographs, and saving artifacts from E-Bay or physical decay. Their mission began well before the City’s current renaissance, but it was their vision that allowed the City to be restored to its present state. Ask anyone who has restored a building in town and you’ll be quick to discover that the Beacon Historical Society played an integral part in the process of bringing that building back to its former glory.

At present, the Historical Society is housed at the Howland Cultural Center, a space that was adequate in the past, but which presently doesn’t suit the purposes of the Society or serve the community to the extent that it should. To be truly useful the Historical Society should provide the privacy of a library for those who need to do research, access to archival film without having to travel to an alternative location, safe storage and display cases for fragile artifacts, and an educational facility for school children, where they can touch, feel, and see the City’s past while they dream about its future.

The most fitting home for the Beacon Historical Society would be a building of architectural or historical significance. But what’s more important is that the Historical Society has a place to call its permanent home. A home that is inviting to those with an interest in the City’s history, that allows easy access to historical archives, and that will allow it to grow, as the City’s future becomes its history.

The City of Beacon owes much of its current renaissance to the Society that cared enough to maintain its history. It’s time for the community to give the Beacon Historical Society a home and the presence it deserves.

Comments

[Beaconite]

How about the old Beacon High School? Bulldog studios hasn't taken up all the rooms, have they?

[Mike]

As far as I know, Bulldog Studios is using all the available space in the old high school. But it's worth checking out.

MD

[b pendleton]

a local musium would be nice