State grant will help Gregg County Historical Museum with building repairs

The Gregg County Historical Museum is housed in the Everett Building on North Fredonia Street in Longview. Michael Cavazos

A $30,000 grant from the Texas Historical Commission will allow the Gregg County Historical Museum to make needed renovations to the second floor of the Everett Building, where it is housed.

The Everett Building at 214 N. Fredonia St. was built in 1910, is a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark and among five properties or districts in Gregg County listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Museum Executive Director Lindsay Loy said this is the second time the museum has received the Texas Preservation Trust Fund grant, which was only awarded to 12 entities this year.

Information from the Texas Historical Commission states that it accepted 30 grant applications in February that were narrowed down to 23 projects that advanced to the project proposal stage. 

"Seventeen proposals were submitted to the THC in July. ... Twelve proposals were approved for grant funding totaling $271,275," according to the THC.

The museum received the grant for the first time in 2016 and used it to unbrick and rebrick the north wall of the building, Loy said. 

"We had water encroachment coming through our north wall that ended up being a problem," she said. "Through the end of the project, we got the water issue fixed; we stabilized the north wall, and this opened up the project to renovations on the second floor."

The 2016 project cost was a little more than $100,000 — $40,000 of which came from the Texas Historical Commission grant, she said.

Mark Thacker, preservation architect for the museum, did such an impressive job sending project reports to the commission that it reached out to the museum and asked it to apply for this year's grant, Loy said. 

"They liked the fact that we had a plan for our building, that we knew what we were 'gonna do with the second floor, that we had a museum in the building and that people were in here every day," she said. 

According to Loy, 15,000 to 20,000 people visit the museum every year, which illustrates its sustainability to the Texas Historical Commission. The museum applied for this year's grant in July, and staff members were confident it would receive funding after a representative from the commission came to visit.

"So we began planning for the renovation of the second floor so a THC representative came down and met with us and he said, 'The THC wants to fund all of your wall restoration,' " she said. 

The work set for the second floor will span six rooms along the north wall and include wall repair, painting, new doors, trim, floorboards and more, she said. 

"They wanted to focus on wall restoration because if you have the walls stable, the rest of the stuff is just kind of accessories," Loy said. 

The grant comes with a match requirement of $30,000 from the museum, which Loy said it will seek from other foundations. Matching grant funding will be used for other items on the second floor that need repairs, such as plumbing, electrical, air condition and equipment, she said. 

Three of the six rooms set to be redone will contain artifacts from the museum's Buddy Calvin Jones Caddo Collection, which is the second-largest prehistoric collection in the state, Loy cited. The other three rooms will be remodeled to house the museum's archives and oral history library, she said. The museum's archive is at capacity, and the grant will enable it to expand it, she said. 

Loy said receiving the grant means the Texas Historical Commission likes the work the museum is doing and that it is excited about investing in it. 

"This grant will help expand the education opportunities the museum has to offer," she said. "It'll allow more people to come in and view and research the collection...and we'll have more people that'll have access to our oral history."