Newberry Library among suitors for renowned Lake County postcards
A second potential destination for the Lake County Forest Preserve District's renowned Curt Teich Postcard Archives has surfaced, with a decision on the collection's future home expected by next month.
In the meantime, district officials say the Lake County Discovery Museum that has housed the archives for nearly 35 years will close for about a year beginning Sept. 1 to relocate from its longtime home at the Lakewood Forest Preserve in Wauconda to the main forest preserve office in Libertyville.
"It's like packing up to move your house on steroids," said Nan Buckardt, director of education for the forest preserve.
Besides the move itself, exhibits will need to be designed, made and installed, and a variety of other details addressed, before the museum reopens in 2017.
The new public museum space on the first floor of the Libertyville office will be larger and more versatile than at Lakewood, according to Buckardt.
"The configuration of it gives us more flexibility to be able to change exhibits," she said.
Part of the move involves finding a new home for the 3.5 million-postcard archive. Transferring ownership of the world-renowned collection has been under consideration since late last summer, when forest commissioners authorized Executive Director Ty Kovach to enter into preliminary discussions with the University of Illinois. An associated endowment of about $522,000 would also be part of the package.
The district has since heard from the staff of the Newberry Library, an independent research library in Chicago, and the forest preserve staff has been dealing with both institutions.
Their due diligence has included site visits and multiple interviews with curators at each institution. Both have provided statements of interest from top officials regarding the importance of the collection as a resource for study and research.
"It's better for everybody," Katherine Hamilton-Smith, the district's director of public affairs and development, said of the collection's move. "People in Lake County will have better access than we could ever provide."
The postcard archive grew from an initial donation from the Chicago-based Curt Teich Co. in 1982. It is regarded as the largest public collection of postcards and related materials in the world, and a premier source of images from the 20th century.
The postcards and a historical archive of letters, photos and other items have been kept in an old farmhouse at Lakewood but are considered part of the nearby museum's collections.
Transferring ownership of the postcards is expected to reduce the cost of converting a portion of the main office in Libertyville for the museum by $800,000 and save $105,000 a year in staffing and data storage. About $12,000 in revenue from the postcard archives would be lost.
The museum is tentatively scheduled to reopen in August 2017. About $50,000 in admission, merchandise sales and program revenues are expected to be lost during the year it is closed.