Historical Commission Agenda and Packet 2016 08 03 JT

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Page 17 of 150 layouts in The Louisville Historian, a "Brown Bag" program, an Art Walk talk, and a front window exhibit, in addition to highlighting histories of specific Main Street buildings. In addition, Museum staff and volunteers talk about some aspect of Main Street with every visitor who views the Replica of downtown Louisville in the Jordinelli House. More recently, the Museum and the Foundation arranged for Monarch High School students to document buildings on Main Street and Front Street in order to build up an inventory of contemporary photos. As a result, Main Street's interesting history and the crucial role it plays for the town of Louisville is reinforced by the Museum nearly every day. The planned Gateway to downtown, in the form of a pedestrian underpass below the railroad tracks on South Street, will bring pedestrians practically to the door of the Historical Museum on Main Street. With the planned improvements and alterations to the Museum campus, the Museum will take on an even larger and more important role as the location of the town square where the public can gather for community events and as the heart of the Louisville community. Additional strengths of the Museum site, as well as challenges of the site, are discussed below. Community Support and Free Access The Museum enjoys strong support from the community in the form of the Foundation's 734 paying memberships3, a rarely seen level of support for either small historical museums or cities the size of Louisville. (By way of showing the increase in interest, there were 165 paying memberships at the end of 2004.) Additional evidence of strong support is the high level of monetary donations (including memorial donations) made to the Foundation and the community gratitude that is frequently expressed to the Museum staff and volunteers. Like many other small city -owned museums, the Louisville Historical Museum does not charge an admission fee. This allows the Museum to serve its community and leads to repeat visits by the Museum's strongest supporters and donors, as well as older residents who would not be likely to pay an admission fee. In addition, based on observation, it appears that visitors are more likely to make a greater monetary donation upon leaving than what they would have paid in an admission fee. Also, if they are local residents, they are more likely to take a membership form and join. The lack of an admission fee allows the Museum staff and volunteers to focus on welcoming people to the Museum, making connections with them, sharing information, and actively promoting Louisville and its history, which is part of the Museum's mission. Our Museum has instead the model of emphasizing its membership program and other forms of fundraising, which are worked on collaboratively by the Foundation and City staff. Museum experts promote this idea for small museums in order to encourage people to become involved in the Museum's activities and become long-term supporters. Moneys coming from memberships and donations to the Foundation, though they don't become part of the City's General Fund, do typically go directly back to the Museum in the form of the Foundation's financial support for Museum projects and programs. They also go to other worthy projects, such as for the cleaning of the City's antique safe in 2014 and $10,000 in financial support for the City to retain Metcalfe Architecture & Design to conduct the needs 3 The Foundation has 734 paying memberships as of June 15, 2016. A large proportion of these are family memberships that are considered to each represent at least three people. 9