Use this search box to find articles that have run in our newspapers over the last several years.
Date: 9/28/2022
WESTFIELD — More than 100 people attended a reception on Sept. 22 to celebrate the new history exhibit at the Westfield Athenaeum.
“Westfield Through the Ages: 1669 to the Present” includes more than 100 artifacts from the Athenaeum’s collection of more than 1,000 items it has received over the decades. The exhibit is in the newly renovated Elizabeth Reed Room on the main level.
Work on renovating the room and creating the exhibit took about 18 months. The new exhibit — which is more accessible to the public than the Athenaeum’s history museum on the second floor — is a “fresh look” at the city’s history.
Guy McLain, the Athenaeum’s executive director, said the exhibit is more inclusive, with stories of groups that haven’t been discussed as much in the past.
“We’ve also tried to expand the story by including more on the domestic and social life of Westfield residents in the past,” he said. One of the goals is to give viewers a more complete picture of what it was like to live in Westfield in past eras while integrating various aspects of life in the community.
A large permanent display takes up one wall of the room, with a smaller display on the opposite wall that will feature different displays twice a year. The permanent display uses large graphic panels with text and photos as well as period artifacts to chronicle the city’s growth during its more than 350 years.
Lorraine Thompson of Westfield was impressed by what she saw.
“It’s beautiful,” she said. “I’m a visual person, so it’s important for me to see something like this. I think they did an excellent job of telling Westfield’s history.”
Another Westfield resident, Della Hayden, called it “lovely” She said “it was about time we had something to show people the history of who we are.”
Hayden added that the exhibit helps people understand what life was like in Westfield during past centuries.
“People should definitely come see this exhibit — especially younger people who have never experienced using a foot warmer or using a spinning wheel to make their own clothes,” she said.
Sara Curro-Mayne, also from Westfield, spent several minutes carefully studying everything in the permanent display.
“I love it,” she said. “The panels have lots of interesting information and photos that explain and show what a vibrant place Westfield was to live in during the past.”
The “Westfield in the Roaring ‘20s” display was her favorite. The first in what will be a series of rotating displays, it features dresses, purses, shoes and accessories — even a set of golf clubs made in Westfield — from the Athenaeum’s collection of 1920s artifacts.
“I was drawn to it. I can picture myself wearing those clothes. I just like the style of the dresses, the shoes, and the pocketbooks,” said Curro-Mayne.
Rotating exhibits also will go into greater depth on selected themes. The next exhibit will be a history of Westfield veterans and their service. It will run through Memorial Day.
The new history displays do not replace the Athenaeum’s history museum. The history museum on the upper level can only be reached by stairs and isn’t handicap accessible. Due to its remote location, the room has to be staffed when it is open, which limits its hours. In addition, most displays in the history museum haven’t been updated in many years.
McLain said updating the Athenaeum’s history displays, making them much more accessible to the public on the main level, and keeping them open for more hours each week, provides an opportunity for more people to learn about the “amazing history” of Westfield.
Local historian Robert Bown served as the Athenaeum’s primary advisor on the history of Westfield, and also suggested numerous artifacts to display.
Following the reception, Brown gave a 45-minute talk in the Lang Auditorium explaining why the Atheneum had so many artifacts in its collection. He said that for more than a century, the Atheneum accumulated objects from people and organizations in Westfield who wanted to get rid of items, including clothing, that they didn’t want to throw away.
When the Athenaeum opened the second-floor history museum in 1927, it also created exhibits dealing with Westfield history through its objects.
While the well-meaning volunteers had what he called “wonderful successes,” the museum also was treated by people and organizations in Westfield as the community attic for decades.
“If you didn’t know what to do with it, and you didn’t want to throw it away, you brought it down here, because, obviously, they would love it,” he explained. “That meant that they collected an awful lot of unusual things.”
Brown recalled that while working on the new history exhibit project, he got a call that maintenance workers had made a bizarre discovery in an old root cellar attached to the Athenaeum. On the dirt floor, someone in the distant past had put down layers of cardboard to avoid tracking dirt into the main building. Underneath the cardboard were hundreds of government posters from Word War I.
“During the war, the government created bomb posters, recruiting posters, propaganda posters and “eat more/less meat” posters that they produced by the hundreds of thousands and sent to towns all over America to hang in public places,” said Brown.
Apparently, Westfield didn’t hang many of the posters, resulting in a stack of leftovers. While some were damaged, many weren’t but needed careful handling because the paper had become fragile.
“We wanted to frame a few, so we shrink-wrapped them,” said Brown. “Now, we have a group of them we can use for displays and exhibits. We got $15,000 for the rest of them.”
The posters are just some of the “weird” and “wonderful” things discovered while planning the new exhibit. Brown promised that there are other “treasures” that the Athenaeum will be able to show more of in the future.