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Now it needs the money.
The historical society launched a campaign last week to raise $1.5 million by June 30 to claim a matching grant it received from the Laird Norton Co. of Seattle. It also began a search for an architect for the addition.
Mark Peterson, the historical society’s executive director, said the delay in securing the land may have helped by generating publicity for the project.
“People know about the project,” Peterson said.
The nonprofit has received about $200,000 since the beginning of the year, Peterson said, although he held off on fundraising until the land issue was resolved.
The Winona County Board of Commissioners finalized a deal last week to sell a 24-stall parking lot to the society for $85,600, ending a year-long debate over whether the county should part with the land and how much it should get for it.
The historical society wants the addition to relieve its cramped archives, expand exhibit space, and add a meeting room. Preliminary plans also call for a coffee shop and combined museum shop and bookstore. Peterson hopes to have the addition complete by 2010 for the society’s 75th anniversary.
Looking for the right architect
This week, Peterson plans to issue invitations to more than 30 architecture firms, mostly in the Midwest. The goal is to find an architect who can design a 15,000 square-foot addition that will compliment the 92-year-old National Guard Armory building, which has housed the museum since 1971, and fit into the overall fabric of downtown Winona.
“It’s a delicate situation … old and new should function together as an integrated facility,” said Martha Thorne, executive director of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, the architecture trade’s top honor. Thorne has signed on to help the historical society in its search for the right designer.
A former architecture curator for the Art Institute of Chicago, Thorne first worked with the Historical Society last year planning a local architecture exhibit. The topic of the addition came up, and Thorne said she was impressed by the historical society’s ambition and enthusiasm.
“In this case it’s special,” Thorne said of her involvement. “When nonprofits undertake smaller projects, it’s probably not so common to do a search as broad as this.”
While the $3.38 million addition probably won’t attract any Pritzker Prize-winning architects, Thorne’s involvement might help draw a larger pool of candidates than such a project would otherwise.
“She brings the skills to get us through the process,” Peterson said. “She also could bring in others who might not normally show an interest.”
Thorne said she made calls to some colleagues at the University of Minnesota and the Minneapolis Institute of Art and included some other architects she knows on the list.
While it would have been easier to raise money with drawings in hand, the Historical Society decided that a request for qualifications made more sense than a design competition, which would cost more and might not land the right firm for the job, Peterson said.
“I can’t commend them enough for trying to do something … that will contribute to the architectural fabric of the city,” Thorne said. “I don’t know of any town … of that size that has so many significant representations of architecture” — from George Maher’s prairie style Watkins building and Winona National Bank to Charles G. Maybury’s gothic county courthouse to a prefab 1950s Lustron house — “the density of significant architecture is really pretty special.”
