Ascending a radius staircase rebuilt to look as it did in 1903, visitors to the Waukegan History Museum at the Carnegie will step back in time, entering rooms meticulously redone to replicate their original early-1900s look.
For the past 18 months, construction crews have worked to make the building look as it did both when it opened, and a generation later when the late renowned author Ray Bradbury spent hours in the children’s reading room where he developed his thirst for books.
Gunny Harboe, the architect who led the replication efforts, said many of the original materials were sent out for restoration. Paint was mixed — in some cases with sand — to match the same color and feel it did over more than a century ago.
Workers clear gravel around the radius staircase in front of the museum. (Steve Sadin/Lake County News-Sun)
“It was replicated to look like the original 120 years ago,” Harboe said. “The original wood was restored.”
Referring to the original tiles, he said, “They were marked, cataloged and sent out to be restored. They are going back in (precisely) the same place.”
The museum is scheduled to open in the fall at the northeast corner of Sheridan Road and Washington Street in Waukegan after construction is completed over the summer, and the exhibits are then put in place so guests can experience history in a location where some were made.
A joint venture between the Waukegan Park District and the Waukegan Historical Society, the Park District acquired the shuttered Carnegie Library from the city four years ago. A dream since 2018, significant private funding and grants made the project possible.
“This is exciting,” Historical Society President Lori Nerheim said. “I’m ready for people to be able to see it, and have something back in this building again. We’ll be bringing all of our archives and collections from their current location in Bowen Park.”
Renovations are often done, but Nerheim said it was important to give this historically landmarked building the same feel it had when it opened as people learn about the history of Waukegan from the last ice age to the present day.
“The Carnegie itself is a historically significant building,” she said. “It is fitting to tell the city’s history in this historic site, while continuing its original intent of being an educational and gathering place for the community.”
Lori Nerheim and Ty Rohrer talk about the restored original tiles which will go around the fireplace in the Ray Bradbury Room at the Waukegan History Museum at the Carnegie. The paint is a precise replica of the original. (Steve Sadin/Lake County News-Sun)
Tasked with the restoration, Harboe said the necessary research was done so decades of layers of paint could be peeled off to precisely match it to the original. Tiles and woodwork were restored with the same level of precision.
Walking through the front door, guests will see a reception desk and a gallery for temporary exhibits and special events. To their left is the Ray Bradbury Room, and to their right is the research library.
Ty Rohrer, the Park District’s manager of cultural arts and a member of the historical society board, said the temporary exhibits may come from the Field Museum in Chicago or the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C.
“They will be national or international exhibits which will relate to (people in) Waukegan,” Rohrer, also a historian, said. “This is something we couldn’t do before.”
The brick and stone on the back of the Waukegan History Museum at the Carnegie are restored to their original look. (Steve Sadin/Lake County News-Sun)
With the improved mechanical systems and infrastructure — nearly all of which is hidden to keep the original look — Harboe said the building meets the standards required to display such exhibits.
Rohrer said the Bradbury room is designed to look the way it was when the author frequented the library as a boy. It will contain his personal papers willed to the Waukegan Public Library. There will also be an interactive element to the permanent exhibit.
“We want it to come alive like it did for Ray,” Rohrer said. “When he went in there, his imagination exploded with ideas. We want children to be able to experience that.”
Unlike most downtown Waukegan buildings where people enter on the ground floor and ascend to the other levels, the museum is the opposite. It is built into a bluff. Entry is on the top floor, with descent to other levels. There are no windows looking west beneath the first floor, but many of the building’s original windows feature views of Lake Michigan.
Located on the second level will be the permanent exhibits showing Waukegan’s history from the last ice age, through to the lives of its indigenous people, to its founding as Little Fort and then Waukegan.
“It’s going to show our diversity, from our early days until now,” Rohrer said. “Some of it will be notable, and some of it people will have no idea it happened here.”
Collections of historical materials will be stored on the third and fourth floors along with a classroom. The walls and fixtures there are also restored to look as they did in the early 20th century. Mechanical systems are on the bottom floor.
