NORWAY — The Norway Museum and Historical Society will host an open house from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, June 16. Tours will be given of the newly completed renovations made to the society building.

Through a Davis Family Foundation grant of $10,000 the second floor of the museum has been refurbished and made into a safe and attractive place to store and display some of the society’s special collections, such as schoolroom artifacts and class photos and Norway author C. A. Stephens’ books and memorabilia.

To prepare for the renovations, the space was emptied and items moved to a temporary location. Volunteers, trustees and high school students spent many hours moving artifacts down two flights of stairs into the basement.

The empty space was insulated and alterations were made to the walls that were then plastered and painted. The entire floor was newly painted. Items to be stored and displayed permanently were moved back up the two flights to their much safer home.

The renovations were begun in 2016 with work on the basement. Temperature and humidity fluctuations were studied at various times of the day, the seasons and the year.

In 2017, the basement was insulated and an industrial dehumidifier was installed to maintain a controlled, year round temperature to store fragile collections, such as 150 years of Norway’s newspapers, old maps and town documents.

With these changes, the Norway Museum and Historical Society has taken steps to fulfill its mission of collecting, storing and sharing Norway’s history.

Ron Blake finishes work on the second floor of the Norway Museum and Historical Society.


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