{"id":3058,"date":"2018-12-01T04:34:46","date_gmt":"2018-12-01T04:34:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lovettsvillehistoricalsociety.org\/?p=3058"},"modified":"2018-12-01T05:22:39","modified_gmt":"2018-12-01T05:22:39","slug":"purcellville-gazette-lovettsville-museum-renovations-showcase-new-interpretive-displays-new-sign-welcomes-visitors-11302018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.lovettsvillehistoricalsociety.org\/index.php\/purcellville-gazette-lovettsville-museum-renovations-showcase-new-interpretive-displays-new-sign-welcomes-visitors-11302018\/","title":{"rendered":"Purcellville Gazette: Lovettsville Museum Renovations Showcase New\u00a0Interpretive\u00a0Displays, New Sign Welcomes Visitors (11\/30\/2018)"},"content":{"rendered":"

[slideshow_deploy id=’3071′]<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Reprinted with permission from the Purcellville Gazette,<\/em><\/strong>
\n November 30, 2018 Issue<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Photographs by Eric Wickstrom<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Lovettsville Museum\u2019s new scarlet red sign was hung on the west side of the museum that is located in the parking lot of the Lovettsville Town Hall.<\/p>\n

The sign is\u00a08 feet long and 3 feet wide\u00a0and\u00a0runs nearly one third of the 25 foot length\u00a0of the west side of the museum building that faces the Town Square. The design on the sign was created by Lovettsville Historical Society Board Member Melani Carty and is now the museum\u2019s new logo.<\/p>\n

The new sign was hung on Wednesday, November 28 with the assistance of the Lovettsville Historical Society Board members.<\/p>\n

The Lovettsville Museum is solely dedicated to telling the story of the community in which it is located noted the Lovettsville Historical Museum in a recent press release.<\/p>\n

Over the last year and a half, the Lovettsville Museum has undergone major renovations to its interior that now provides better lighting and display areas for visitors to view the museum\u2019s local historic pieces and artifacts, new interpretive posters, hands-on interactive display for kids,\u00a0and\u00a0increased area for researchers to more\u00a0easily\u00a0access the files in the archives room.<\/p>\n

Additional display boards with aerial photographs of the area\u00a0from 1968 to 2018, with 1982 and 1995 in between,\u00a0showing\u00a0how much the town has grown, are now on display inside the museum. A large wall display, written by LHS vice president Ed Spannaus, is dedicated to telling the story of the German migration from the German Palatinate, across the Atlantic to New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland into Virginia.<\/p>\n

Carty, along with Lovettsville Historical Society Board member Mike Zapf, were instrumental in the renovation of the museum. Both have been members of the Lovettsville community\u00a0since the early 2000s.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have been able to brighten and lighten the interior. And recently we have added more descriptive displays and posters where we can integrate photos from our historical archives. The interior is\u00a0now\u00a0more spacious and more organized,\u201d said Carty and notes the museum\u2019s next order of business will be to place the displays in chronological order. She also mentioned their museum gift shop\u2019s\u00a0product offerings will be expanded\u00a0in the coming months.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have the resources but didn\u2019t have\u00a0the museum\u00a0set up properly to tell the story,\u201d said Zapf so they set out to reconfigure the entire interior of the museum to give everyone an idea of what Lovettsville is like and how it changed over the years.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are trying to transform the museum\u00a0from a place that just has objects in it\u00a0to something that tells a story,\u201d said Zapf. \u201cWe have comprehensive archives that people from across the country come to us to ask us about their ancestry. Some come to visit in person and members of the Lovettsville Historical Society are able to take the visitors to the original homestead. They really make a connection,\u201d he continued.<\/p>\n

While the Town of Lovettsville owns the building in which the museum is housed, the Lovettsville Historical Society maintains the inside with its historical pieces and artifacts and staffs the museum with volunteers when\u00a0it is open on Saturday afternoons.<\/p>\n

In coordination with renovations, the Lovettsville Historical Society is\u00a0just beginning\u00a0the\u00a0process of expanding their website by\u00a0digitizing their archives and records,\u00a0thanks to a generous grant in 2018 from the Loudoun Preservation Society for a high quality large format scanner.<\/p>\n

\u201cA great way to expand the reach of the museum is to put more items online with the intent of eventually placing all of our archives online,\u201d said Carty. \u201cPeople from Lovettsville starting from the 1830\u2019s were migrating to the western frontier,\u00a0places like present-day Ohio, Illinois and Indiana, in search of less expensive farm land. We get a lot of calls and emails\u00a0from people out west who want to know their past,\u201d said Carty.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Lovettsville Historical Society is an\u00a0under-realized\u00a0little treasure in the northwest corner of Loudoun County,\u201d said Carty. \u201cThe mission statement is to expand and protect the history of Lovettsville and the surrounding German settlement and we are\u00a0always looking for more ways\u00a0to do that,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Zapf explained that people get bored with the same museum displays so the Lovettsville Historical Society decided to change the displays during the renovation and tell more of the story of Lovettsville.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere were artifacts\u00a0on display that had no explanatory documentation, so we had to do something more to tell the story to show the community,\u201d he said. \u201cThe new people moving into the community want to know something about their new home. The new families are aware that Lovettsville is an almost 300-year-old settlement.\u201d<\/p>\n

New families buying old houses want to know its history and there are others who are in new housing are interested in what was there before their housing development was built,\u00a0he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a curiosity,\u201d said Zapf from the new families coming to live in Lovettsville. \u201cIf we can tell them about our heritage, they become owners of the heritage. It all binds the community.\u201d Adds Carty, \u201cKnowing what was here in the past, the buildings, the people, the events, adds layers to the experienced ‘sense of history’ and ‘sense of place’ of Lovettsville and our surrounding area.”<\/p>\n

The Lovettsville Historical Society will hold its Annual Membership Meeting at 2:00 pm on Sunday, December 9 at the Lovettsville Museum. The meeting is open to all members and prospective members, and will feature an exhibition of the Museum’s new design and displays.<\/p>\n

The Lovettsville Museum is\u00a0located in the historic \u201cPotterfield Meat Store\u201d (circa 1890) building next\u00a0to the the parking lot in front of the Town Hall at 4 East Pennsylvania Avenue in Lovettsville. The museum is open from 1:00-4:00 on Saturdays, year round.\u00a0For more information, visit\u00a0LovettsvilleHistoricalSociety.org<\/u>.<\/p>\n

All photographs by Eric Wickstrom<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[slideshow_deploy id=’3071′] Reprinted with permission from the Purcellville Gazette, November 30, 2018 Issue Photographs by Eric Wickstrom   The Lovettsville Museum\u2019s new scarlet red sign was hung on the west…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3064,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3058","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-feature-article","category-newspaper"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.lovettsvillehistoricalsociety.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3058","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.lovettsvillehistoricalsociety.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.lovettsvillehistoricalsociety.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.lovettsvillehistoricalsociety.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.lovettsvillehistoricalsociety.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3058"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.lovettsvillehistoricalsociety.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3058\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3073,"href":"http:\/\/www.lovettsvillehistoricalsociety.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3058\/revisions\/3073"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.lovettsvillehistoricalsociety.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3064"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.lovettsvillehistoricalsociety.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.lovettsvillehistoricalsociety.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.lovettsvillehistoricalsociety.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}