3 small museums soldier on at Jefferson Barracks
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
March 5, 2010
By Tim O'Neil
ST. LOUIS -- With small donations and long hours, Mark Trout and his volunteers have made great strides in restoring an old wreck of a building at Jefferson Barracks for their museum on Missouri's role in the Civil War.
"We had raccoons living here. Beehives. Rats in the basement," said Trout, director and chairman of the Missouri Civil War Museum. "You could see the storms through the roof before they hit."
The old camp gymnasium, built in 1905, now has a new roof and is about 70 percent restored inside. The group has raised more than $1 million since 2002, and its members have done most of the sawing and hammering.
Theirs is one of three independent restoration projects under way at the old military camp in south St. Louis County. The efforts fit neatly into St. Louis County's plan to promote Jefferson Barracks as a tourist stop for the history-minded, and county officials are grateful for the work being done now.
In January, the county released a sweeping master plan for improving and promoting the historic buildings and grounds. Its goal is a major and unified attraction by 2026, the 200th anniversary of Jefferson Barracks.
It was the first permanent military installation west of the Mississippi River and a busy training center each time America went to war until 1946, when the Army moved out. The Missouri National Guard and Army Reserve still operate there and are building a $27 million administrative center, which is designed to blend with the red-brick 19th-century architecture all around it.
The national cemetery, the Veterans Affairs hospital and a county park cover most of the camp's original 1,705 acres, which sit atop the Mississippi River bluffs just north of Interstate 255.
Trout's group needs an additional $250,000 to open the museum by April 11, 2011, the 150th anniversary of the bombardment of Fort Sumter at Charleston, S.C., that began the Civil War.
"That's our goal, anyway," Trout said.
Similar hopes are told by the organizers of the other private museum efforts, and were the dreams of another project that, sadly, went away. Status report:
-- The Jefferson Barracks Heritage Foundation completed restoration in 2007 of the Red Cross building, next door to the old gym and a USO of sorts during World War II. The association's big plan is to remake the camp's Building 27, a 114-year-old barracks, as a museum to the American soldier. The National Guard uses that building now, but it's set to move operations to the new one beginning this summer.
"We're waiting on the military, and times are tough for fundraising," said William Florich, foundation director.
It spent $250,000 restoring the Red Cross building, which houses a display of military uniforms and "Wall of Honor" to ordinary American service personnel since the Revolution. The foundation has raised about $1 million of its $15 million goal for its next big job.
-- A group of telephone-company retirees is almost done restoring one of the former officers' homes along the parade ground for a museum of communications technology dating to the 19th century. Their link to the barracks is that it was "wired" back in 1898, in the old-old days of telephones.
Carol Johannes, coordinator, said the group has raised about $60,000, done almost all of the work itself and hopes to open this fall.
"With technology changing so rapidly, we want kids to see what it used to look like," Johannes said.
-- The building next to the telephone museum housed a Civilian Conservation Corps museum for 21 years until summer 2008, when the few surviving alums of the Depression-era jobs program couldn't keep it going anymore. A statue honoring the CCC still stands, but there is no plan to replace the museum.
The county maintains museums in several 19th-century stone buildings on the north end of the park. That wouldn't change under the county's grand plan.
Dennis Coleman, chief executive of the county economic council, said the county's goal is to help coordinate the efforts already under way "so they can be of more value than as individual components. We believe we have a true national treasure here.
"If a visitor can know ahead of time that there is an entire collection of museums and historical sites, it can enhance the experience," he said. "It can encourage development for South County."
GRANT LIBRARY
When the county released its master plan on Jan. 25, a headline-grabbing element was its proposal for a library in memory of Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, Civil War hero and 18th president, who served at Jefferson Barracks as a young lieutenant and married a local girl, Julia Dent.
The idea has caused some dissension among the Civil War museum people and appears to face a serious roadblock -- the keeper at Mississippi State University of the largest collection of Grant's papers says it is fine where it is.
Trout, of the Civil War group, said the Grant library "would be in competition with us. We already are close to making a significant impact."
But Florich, of the Heritage Foundation, said Trout "has it backwards. The library would help us all."
As disputes go, this one is low-key, largely because of the sentiments of John Marszalek, a retired history professor at Mississippi State in Starkville, Miss., director of the U.S. Grant Association and keeper of its collection.
The papers were moved there in 2008 from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale after the death of his predecessor, historian John Y. Simon.
"We have a good agreement with the university," Marszalek said. "I'd bet the farm we're not going anywhere."
Said Coleman of the county economic council, "The Grant piece could be very significant to this effort, but it will still go on without it. And (the Grant) people can always change their minds."
