Animatronic mayor to tell Rosemont’s story in new history museum
Preparations are underway to open Rosemont’s new history museum — perhaps, with a robotic likeness of the late Mayor Donald E. Stephens — in time for the 70th anniversary of the town’s incorporation on Jan. 20, 2026.
More planning meetings are scheduled for later this week and next with village officials and a Chicago-based museum design and construction firm tasked with creating the historical displays and interactive exhibits that will be located just off the lobby of village hall at 9501 Technology Blvd.
It’s where a larger-than-life bronze statue of the late mayor and town founder was relocated last summer from the old village hall at 9501 W. Devon Ave.
The proposed Donald E. Stephens Rosemont History Museum will chronicle the town’s development from swamps, potholes and garbage dumps into the business and entertainment mecca it is today, tied to the growth of neighboring O’Hare International Airport.
Telling much of that story will be an animatronic likeness of legendary suburban politician and power broker himself — if the village can raise enough private funds to foot the estimated $100,000 to $200,000 cost.
Stephens’ grandson — current Mayor Brad Stephens’ 12-year-old son Joseph — is expected to make the fundraising pitch to local businesses and residents in a video; it was his idea for a talking, moving depiction of the grandfather he never met following a family trip to the Hall of Presidents at Walt Disney World in Florida.
The current mayor and museum curators recently met with a company that has developed animatronic robots for Disney.
Static displays — including some of the late mayor’s vast collection of M.I. Hummel figurines — will also have a place within the 4,300-square-foot history museum. The village closed its Hummel museum at 9513 W. Higgins Road late last year and is cataloging the 2,500 tiny porcelain pieces, in addition to ANRI wood figurines and Disney collectibles that the former mayor collected.
Under early design plans, the new museum will have room to show more Hummels than originally expected, Brad Stephens said Monday.
It was a recent visit to Adler Planetarium that impressed upon father and son the value of having a variety of features in a museum. While kids flocked to the flashier digital exhibits, adults read the more traditional displays.
“We’re trying to make it interesting to young and old,” Stephens said of the new museum.
On Monday, the village board approved the $147,200 purchase of a 6-by-12-foot interactive LED monitor that will be placed in the village hall lobby in the next 45 days, with plans to integrate it into the museum, officials say. Annual maintenance and programming with PanoScape Holdings will cost $59,000.
The digital touch screen will allow the public to make reservations at Rosemont restaurants, purchase tickets to events, and file Freedom of Information Act requests, for example. Officials are installing the big screen at village hall, but think it may also have some application for trade shows at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center. Similar digital boards are on college campuses and inside casinos in Las Vegas, Brad Stephens said.