[BCMA] Wanted: Old photos of the interior of Irving House and the New Westminster Museum & Archives

[Moderated BCMA subscriber listserv.]

We are undergoing an interior restoration of the 1865 Irving House in
New Westminster over the next 5-6 years and we are looking for more
INTERIOR photos. Naturally we would love more interior photos taken
before it became a museum in 1950 but have only found two of these so
far, both dating from 1945. A better chance is finding some taken during
the 1950s and 1960s after it became a museum. Many changes were made to
the house in that period, which although made with good intentions,
would not be thought of as appropriate today (e.g. ripping out an 1865
wooden fireplace mantle and "improving" the house with a fancier c.1910
mantle and replacing a plain original electric light fixture with a
fancy chandelier.)  We have part of that 1865 mantle, but do not have
any photographs showing it in situ nor have we found photos yet of the
original light fixture in the dining room. Old photos can also help us
solve mysteries of poorly documented early donations as we can sometimes
spot specific artifacts and then know that they were here as of the date
of the photo. 

 

We would also like photos taken INSIDE the New Westminster Museum &
Archives building - especially any taken in the storage areas before
Jennifer Breckon did the clean-up in the early 2000s under Jacqueline
O'Donnell. Does anyone have photos of the 1929 firetruck when it was
still on display in our museum basement? How about the old basket
display on the main floor of the museum? Tip: If you are going to do a
clean-up of your storage area or do a restoration of a building, take
lots of "before" pictures --- even if they are embarrassing. I wish now
that I had taken photos of the rotating display shelf with the human
skulls at the Surrey Museum. Yes, that was a LONG time ago. 

 

We have almost completed our artifact inventory which has taken about
5-years so far - due to the fact that we have over 32,000 artifacts and
life happens when you are making plans, or trying to do an inventory! We
can now find any one of over 91% of our artifacts within 5-minutes. The
inventory was a crucial goal for us as our museum was suffering greatly
in the community from the museum's perceived lack of accountability for
the collection. Jacqueline and Jennifer started it off on the right path
and we continued on with the next phase. The last 5% will be the hardest
part due to inadequate old records, double numbering and lack of
numbering. The process is well worth it though. It is such a joy to be
able to find out what we have and then be able to retrieve it within
5-minutes, especially when a visitor is asking about an item that they
donated many years ago. Very early on in this inventory a donor asked
about a large silver Governor General's medal and also about book signed
by a family member from Irving House, which they had donated years ago.
We had no record of either item but we made notes. Two YEARS later our
archivist found a bag of unprocessed artifacts tucked away in the
archives' storage and it was this donation, so we were able to contact
the donor with the good news. We had a similar situation with a "Gottem"
- an odd device used for measuring the angle of a roof - but done safely
from the ground.  

 

COLIN 

 

Colin MacGregor Stevens,

Manager,

New Westminster Museum and Archives,

302 Royal Avenue,

New Westminster, BC, 

V3L 1H7

 

Phone Office:    604-527-4639

Work Cellular : 604-830-6965

Fax:                  604-527-4641

E-mail: cstevens at newwestcity.ca 

Web Site: www.newwestminster.ca 

 

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.vvv.com/pipermail/bcma/attachments/20091217/bd458a38/attachment-0001.htm 
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 23762 bytes
Desc: image001.jpg
Url : http://lists.vvv.com/pipermail/bcma/attachments/20091217/bd458a38/attachment-0001.jpeg