The Wexford County Historical Museum is like a time capsule of Cadillac.
When it was built in 1906, and was one of 1,600 Carnegie Libraries in the U.S.
Then after serving some time as the Cadillac Police Department, the building became the Wexford County Historical Museum in 1978.
“This place is arguably the most impressive place in Cadillac, it’s a classic revival style architecture,” said Cliff Sjorgren, a volunteer.
But equally if not more impressive than the outside of the building — are the decades of history preserved inside.
“Think about the stories they could tell and the people that touched those and their stories,” said Amy Schmid.
It’s the Wexford County Historical Museum.
Cliff Sjogren used to come here in the 1930’s.
Now he volunteers giving tours of the museum.
“This is a very important room, this is the research room, we have a lot here we have old telephone books over here,” he said. “There you have vehicles that were made in Cadillac, in fact, they called themselves the Cadillac Motor Company.”
Moving through the museum, this room demonstrates what life at home looked like in the 1900’s.
“There are so many cute little crevices in our museum that I just can’t say enough, I can’t put it into words,” said Schmid. “This is quite frankly one of my favorite spots of the museum.”
It’s the general store with mailboxes because most general stores served as post offices.
The basement is home to hundreds of other artifacts where time stands still.
“It can be emotional quite frankly, you think about what life was like, wow actual people used these tools or wore these clothes,” she said. “Now we take our minds today and think not a big deal but look at the saw they had to use and the engineering they had to use to load the logs up on the wagons for the horses at that time.”
Around the corner is Dr. Munson’s dentist room, down the hall from the old bank and old school room.
“It’s just so cool to see how things have evolved,” she said.
Historical Society members hope that this museum — where history fills the walls from floor to ceiling — helps people understand what life was really like more than a century ago — on the same streets we walk today.
“There were a lot of pioneers and people that worked really hard to get to where we are and I don’t think that we really recognize that or think about that as much as we really should, so we need to preserve that,” she said.
The museum is working on restorations to preserve the building that’s more than 100 years old. The building runs on donations, so the Historical Society is trying to raise about $600,000 to keep it running.
The roofing, gutters, ans associated masonry would cost $135,100.
The lintel replacement would cost $42,000, and the masonry completion would be another $5,000.
Along with a few others, the ADA/504 compliance would cost $150,000 and the main entrance steps would be $140,000.
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