Museum looks for new lease on life at arena

Walk into the Snohomish County Museum — a place I’m embarrassed to say I’d never been before last week — and you’ll be stopped cold by a wall-size photograph. It’s Hewitt Avenue, a westward view, taken between 1911 and 1915.

What’s striking about the picture is the crowded bustle of the Everett street. The place is hopping. Trolleys, buggies and prosperous-looking pedestrians pack the avenue.

"Look, there’s Turner’s," museum director Eric Taylor said, pointing out the building on Hewitt and Broadway that’s now a popular tavern.

Tugboat exhibit

“Puget Sound Tugboats,” an exhibit on loan from the Edmonds Historical Museum, opens today at the Snohomish County Museum in Everett. There’s an opening reception from 1 to 3 p.m. at the museum, 2817 Rockefeller Ave.

Regular museum hours are 1 to 4 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday. Admission is free, but donations are appreciated. For information, call 425-259-2022.

It’s also striking that the intersection captured by photographer J.A. Juleen so long ago is ground zero in the contentious debate over the proposed hockey arena and event center.

With all the wrangling over the site, loss of historic buildings and a push for a public vote, I’ll ask a question that won’t cause a bit of hullabaloo: What about the museum?

The Everett City Council last month voted to add $6 million to the arena price tag, now $62.5 million, to spruce up the facade and build into the design a second-floor museum.

I knew that the Snohomish County Museum is housed in the lower level of Mike Jordan’s Betty Spooner dance studio on Rockefeller Avenue, but that’s about all I knew. I visited Thursday to ask if this is the museum slated for the arena — if indeed we get an arena.

"There are no guarantees, but if this were to happen, it would really increase our visibility. The special event center is hard to accept because of the loss of historic buildings, but we’re intrigued," said Taylor, who works half-time as the museum’s only paid staff member.

Even if the arena becomes reality, the museum needs interim space, Taylor said. The current lease is up in May, and Jordan is expanding his studio.

The Snohomish County Museum and Historical Association is a self-supporting organization. Established in 1954 by the Everett Current Events Club, it exhibited at the Everett Public Library before moving to a city-owned World War II surplus building at Legion Park.

It moved to space leased by the city on Hewitt in 1986, but that lease was terminated by the city council in 1992 after a dispute over museum leadership.

"There was a misunderstanding over who was running the museum," Taylor said. "The city created a mayor’s advisory board, but the historical association thought they were running the show."

With city ties severed, the museum moved to its current home. It is funded by an endowment, grants, donations, memberships and sales. A dozen volunteers and about 250 members keep it going.

The falling out with the city is old news, and the arena prospect is a fresh chapter, said Ed Morrow, who has long wanted to find the museum and historical association a good home.

"The mayor (Ed Hansen) is offering this space, and the city council is very supportive," said Morrow, a past member of both the Everett City Council and the Everett Port Commission. "The mayor does not care who owns the artifacts. We need to save our legacy for future generations."

Both the city and the museum "have lots of nice things," Morrow added.

"Ed and I have had an interest in this for many years," local historian Larry O’Donnell said. "It would be nice to have a really high-quality place."

O’Donnell said he wasn’t sure how much of 21,000 square feet in an arena could be used by the museum.

"Right now they have about 5,600 square feet," Morrow said, adding that the arena site "would be a marvelous thing."

"It’s a natural," he said. "People could come for an event and see about Everett’s past."

Taylor showed me that past with a behind-the-scenes peek at a few of the thousands of objects crammed into storage.

There’s the massive desk of Roland Hartley, an early governor from Everett.

There’s a box of photos from a former exhibit, "Henry M. Jackson: A Legacy of Public Service."

There’s a brass sign from The Grand Leader Dry Goods Co., a long-gone Everett department store.

There’s a soapbox derby car from a Salty Sea Days race.

There’s an immigrant’s trunk, labeled "Norway, 1883."

Looking at the trunk, Taylor was touched "by how people would put all their worldly belongings in a case like that and come to a country where they didn’t speak the language — and succeed."

He feels a responsibility to preserve things and tell their stories, saying, "We have a connection with people who came before."

Contact Julie Muhlstein via e-mail at muhlsteinjulie@heraldnet.com, write to her at The Herald, P.O. Box 930, Everett, WA 98206, or call 425-339-3460.