Champaign historical museum suffering from lack of volunteers
The county’s historical museum has a historical building, the 1857 Cattle Bank, and a large collection of exhibits, but what it doesn’t have is volunteers, which means it doesn’t have many visitors.
The Champaign County Historical Museum is open only five hours a week, Saturdays from noon until 5 p.m., staffed by an aging board of directors.
Its co-president, Hal Balbach, said that if the museum were open more often, it might attract more visitors.
“We’re operating at a rather low level of activity at this time,” he said. “Our finances are passable for a small non-profit, though not as healthy as we would like. We’re not in a situation to employ any full-time staff.”
Dannel McCollum, who as Champaign mayor was also the city’s official historian, said the city has never had as much level of interest in a museum as other towns like Bloomington, or even much-smaller Danville.
“I’ve always been a member of the Vermilion (County) society, a county with a population half that of Champaign and much fewer (financial) resources, and I’ve always wondered that it could do so much better than Champaign,” he said.
Harold Balbach, co-president of the Champaign County Historical Museum, shown in front of an exhibit in the facility’s home at the 1857 Cattle Bank building, says a dearth of volunteers has kept visitors away. The museum is currently being staffed by an aging board of directors and is open only five hours a week, from noon to 5 p.m. on Saturdays. By Vanda Bidwell
McCollum said the Danville area has a smaller but more stable population than Champaign, which has many people passing through the University of Illinois or area hospitals.
That helps create a dearth of volunteers as well as donors. The Corporation for National and Community Service, the parent group for AmeriCorps, said economic pressures are causing a drop in volunteering nationwide, with about 22 million U.S. volunteers dropping out between 2006 and 2007, from firefighters to Red Cross volunteers.
Bob Swisher, a founder of Champaign’s Preservation and Conservation Association, said he’s in his 70s and often alone on a brick-cleaning crew for the organization.
“Getting volunteers has been really hard the last four or five years,” Swisher said. “The exception is Habitat for Humanity. The other day, when I was hauling bricks for PACA, I drove by two houses that had 50 or 60 volunteers. I was really jealous.”
One flourishing remaining source for volunteers, he added, is people performing community service for misdemeanors.
Champaign’s historical museum has had promise, McCollum said, with volunteers raising enough funds for two attractive homes, first the Wilber Mansion on University Avenue, then the Cattle Bank down the street from it.
The first was built in 1907 and was sold by the Wilber family in 1974 to the Champaign County Historical Museum. The museum society sold it in 1997.
“It was still in nearly original condition, but not well-suited to being a museum, as far as having a focal point,” the former mayor said. “There were no miracle answers. The situation deteriorated to the point where it was clear it could not be sustained, but it was sold for a fairly tidy sum.”
For several years, the museum’s collection was boxed up and housed in a storage facility near the Cattle Bank, McCollum said.
The oldest commercial building in the county, the Cattle Bank had fallen on hard times, with many businesses moving in and out over the decades, taking on a toll in its historic quality.
With backing from the city, a redevelopment effort under former Mayor Joan Severns, the Cattle Bank had a major restoration in 1983, including a new roof, foundation work and new exterior window frames.
Meanwhile, McCollum said, the museum society considered partnerships with the Early American Museum in Mahomet and the Historical Archives at the Urbana Free Library, to no avail.
The Cattle Bank remained underused. After several attempts at commercial sale or lease, McCollum said, the building served as the headquarters for the county’s public housing authority.
The Housing Authority moved out of the building in 1999.
Three years later, the historical museum opened there, led by Paul Idleman, a Champaign native, who had been director of the Old Colorado City History Center in Colorado Springs. Idleman was also a photographer, comedy-club manager and friend of rock stars who lived in Colorado.
Idleman, the one-man staff, kept the museum open to the public from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday and 1 to 4 p.m. Sunday, with free admission.
Idleman is recognized as one of the best things to happen to the museum.
“Paul was probably overqualified for the job. He had a lot of energy. He was aggressive in fundraising,” Swisher said.
“Paul brought some wonderful things to the museum. He got things going. We needed communication with the membership, a newsletter, and Paul managed to produce four quarterlies while he was ill,” McCollum said.
But just before Christmas in 2006, Idleman died of cancer at the age of 57.
“We were extremely lucky to find Paul,” Balbach said. “He really excelled in forming partnerships and friendships among local groups, many of which we are still following on with, long after his passing.”
But that also created small problems.
“His illness and passing left us in extremely short circumstances,” Balbach said. “There were a lot of things that he assumed personal responsibility for, that he apparently did not make fully known to anybody else, so we’re still finding little surprises,” such as loans of objects from other institutions.
Balbach said his group is working to raise funds and find more volunteers. One of the moneymakers is a book by McCollum, “Essays on the Historical Geography of Champaign County From the Distant Past to 2005.”
One hundred percent of the sales from the book go toward the museum. It’s sold at the Cattle Bank, as well as Borders, Pages For All Ages and the Jane Addams book store, Balbach said.
Also on tap is a “Lincoln Fest” at the Virginia Theatre next spring, McCollum said.
“We’re moving forward,” Balbach said. “But we could use more of everything – more funds, more volunteers. As with all small nonprofits, utility bills are a terrible drain. Right now, we only have the board members who are willing to work on Saturday.”
The museum’s phone number is 356-1010.