Civil War Museum

Developers of a planned national Civil War museum on Monday have proposed a downtown Hagerstown project site that could displace 15 existing businesses and about 20 residences. cont. from front page The Antietam Creek Coalition wants to build the proposed $45 million affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution at the junction of Antietam and South Potomac streets, said Dennis Frye, spokesman for the nonprofit group developing and designing the museum. Buildings in the proposed site area - which is framed by South Potomac Street to the east, St. John's Lutheran Church to the south and The Herald-Mail to the west - might be demolished to accommodate the planned 80,000-square-foot museum and surrounding outdoor park.

It's rare to get a second opportunity. It's rarer still when the second chance is better by far than the original. Certainly local governments haven't forgotten the lessons of five years ago, and they will jump at this new venture with energy and creativity. Won't they? When the county lost the Civil War Medical Museum to Frederick, it was an embarrassment and what some public officials now acknowledge was a blown opportunity. Let's hope that five years from now we aren't lamenting the mother of all blown opportunities - that we muffed the chance to land the Smithsonian nameplate on a major display of the nation's most extensive and precious collection of Civil War artifacts.

By STEVEN T. DENNIS Staff Writer Hagerstown officials, who last year lost their battle to land the National Museum of Civil War Medicine, say the war isn't over yet. They now are trying to convince museum officials to abandon their headquarters in Frederick, Md., and relocate to a city-owned building in Hagertown. The bid for the museum, which opened in Frederick last June, appears to have been lost, although Hagerstown officials hold out hope the museum's board will consider their offer at its March meeting.

City Council asks for Civil War museum funding A letter of support and a state grant for a proposed Civil War museum for downtown Hagerstown were unanimously approved Tuesday by the Hagerstown City Council. The letter from the city asks the governor to provide $8 million over three years to fund the museum proposed to be built in the first block of West Antietam Street. The $46 million museum is proposed by the nonprofit group the Antietam Creek Coalition. The $75,000 grant comes from the Maryland Economic Development Assistance Fund.

A formal agreement spelling out what the city will get in a $100,000 report to be done by a group promoting the idea of building a Civil War museum in Hagerstown could be ready for approval next week. The agreement between the group, The Antietam Creek Coalition, and the city must be approved by the City Council before the city will pay the coalition to do the report even though the council has already approved spending the money. In July the council voted to give the coalition $37,500 for the report, which will show the feasibility of a museum for Hagerstown and be used as an application for affiliation with the Smithsonian Institution.

If a proposed Civil War museum is built in Hagerstown it might not go in the vacant city-owned Baldwin Complex in downtown Hagerstown as some officials had believed. Members of the nonprofit group proposing the museum said the complex at 32-46 W. Washington St. might not be the site recommended by a study for which city and county funding are being sought. There also is no guarantee the museum would be built in Hagerstown. Hagerstown Mayor Robert E. Bruchey II on Wednesday said he was surprised other sites would be considered.

Frye renews push for museum By ANDREW SCHOTZ / Staff Writer Dennis Frye said Wednesday that he will continue his push for a Civil War museum in downtown Hagerstown despite being shut out of funding in the proposed state budget. continued Frye, representing a nonprofit group supporting the project, sent a letter Wednesday morning to Gov. Parris Glendening promising a $210 million economic return over 10 years if the $46 million museum were built.

At the request of Hagerstown City Council, the Washington County Commissioners voted Tuesday to pay $307,000 for improvements to a downtown parking lot. The County Commissioners were scheduled to vote on the expenditure for the lot on the northeast corner of Public Square during a joint city-county meeting last week. The commissioners postponed the vote after Councilwoman Susan Saum-Wicklein told them the parking lot was a possible location for a proposed Civil War museum.

Promoters of a Civil War museum in Hagerstown and several local elected officials say their plans are unchanged by news Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge Wednesday released $16.2 million for a Civil War museum in Harrisburg, Pa. [cont. from front page ] Ridge's action means construction of a two-story, 60,000-square-foot museum could begin within a month and the approximately $38 million museum could open as early as next summer. "It does not alter our plans one iota," said Dennis E. Frye, a member of the nonprofit Antietam Creek Coalition Inc., which wants to build a $30 million to $40 million Civil War museum with Smithsonian Institution affiliation in Hagerstown.

Museum group pitches new plan By SCOTT BUTKI And DAN KULIN / Staff Writers The private group proposing a $46.5 million Civil War museum for downtown Hagerstown is looking into preserving the facades of buildings that earlier plans had slated for demolition, group officials said Tuesday. Museum proponents also faced questions Tuesday from some Washington County Commissioners who compared the Hagerstown project to a museum project in Harrisburg, Pa. Dennis Frye, a spokesman for the nonprofit group the Antietam Creek Coalition, said Tuesday that saving the facades of existing buildings creates the "potential for more grant funding for the project.

Harrisburg, Pa., is broke. The city is not just in trouble financially, it is bankrupt. Its plight serves as a wake-up call for cities and states all across the nation.   Three weeks ago, facing a number of lawsuits from vendors and creditors, the Harrisburg City Council voted to file for Chapter 9 bankruptcy to skip making past due payments. Current debt is estimated to be $458 million.   Daniel Schwartz, an attorney hired by the council to deal with the mess was quoted as saying, "The city does not have the ability to pay those money judgments or any significant portion thereof and still provide health and safety services to its citizens and other essential government services.

I vaguely remember a plaque in the lobby of my old junior high school that listed the names of the old fossils who were on the board when the building was constructed back in who knows when. Obviously, I don't remember any of these names. And if I had, I would have hated them for facilitating those prison walls that kept me from more interesting and useful pursuits. I guess, at some level, that I understand why school board member Donna Brightman is upset that her name was not to be included on the self-congratulatory plaques of three elementary schools opening in August.

The most intelligent remark from an elected official at this past Tuesday's "State of the City" program came from Hagerstown Mayor Robert Bruchey. "Before we can move forward, we have to stop looking back," Bruchey said. The mayor, who grew up as the son of a city policeman, experienced the city's era as a retail hub, when there were three department stores, numerous men's stores, shoe stores and dress shops. All of them are not gone, but they don't wield the weight in the Washington County market that downtown Hagerstown businesses once did. What the mayor was saying was that downtown will never be what it once was, but with citizens support it could be something else and something good, such as a home for specialty shops where customers pay for service from people who aren't students trying to supplement their allowances.

Editor's note: Each week, The Herald-Mail invites readers to answer poll questions on its Web site, www.herald-mail.com. Readers also may submit comments about the poll question when voting. Each Sunday, a sampling of edited reader comments will run in The Herald-Mail. There were two poll questions last week. The first question was: Should the city council continue to operate the Hagerstown Ice and Sports Complex as an ice rink or use it in some other way? "Are you kidding?

In baseball and public works, everyone likes the home run. Baltimore has its Inner Harbor, Washington, D.C., its Smithsonian, San Antonio its River Walk, Raleigh-Durham its Research Triangle. Nice if you can get them. These home runs guarantee a steady flow of people, money and vibrancy into a community and serve as mainstays for countless other attractions. Sometimes though, it is helpful to face the fact that there is no single silver bullet to guarantee a community's fame and fortune.

Once again, talk has turned to the City of Hagerstown needing a "destination," loosely defined as a stand-alone reason for people from Washington County and beyond to come downtown. The last time the D word raised its head, the cause celebr was a Civil War museum proposed for the block across from Washington County Public Library. Largely, I believe, because of the ambitious project's scope, it never achieved a critical mass of local support. The feeling among city leaders at the time was that it would never be able to attract enough visitors to avoid taxpayer-funded white elephant status.

Time might be right for museum To the editor: Some buildings in downtown Hagerstown have been empty for a long time. Years have passed and there are so many empty buildings that used to hold stores. The mall came and businesses left. The rent for some of those downtown storefronts is $1,500 a month. I am a good friend of one business owner who gave it a go. First, he rented property in the first block of North Potomac Street. His business wasn't working because of the high rent, so he moved his store to down the street across from the library.

daniels@herald-mail.com The cannons outside tell the story of Doug Bast's Boonsborough Museum of History as eloquently as anything inside the structure. Both are easily lost in plain sight. Inside the museum on Boonsboro's Main Street, enticing items can be found in every room and are even mounted to the ceilings. Emphasis is placed on the Civil War, and many items in the collection have ties to Washington County's role in the War Between the States. At the same time, the museum is not by definition a Civil War museum.

wandaw@herald-mail.com Visitors can enjoy a taste of Christmas cheer in the midst of one of West Virginia's most notable Civil War historical collections at the Belle Boyd House and the Ben Boyd Store. In keeping with an 11-year tradition, the Berkeley County Historical Society is holding its annual Christmas open house at the museum on Race Street. The house, which was converted to a museum, was the childhood home of Belle Boyd, one the Civil War's most popular female Confederate spies, society President Don Wood said.

tarar@herald-mail.com Antietam National Battlefield Superintendent John Howard on Tuesday called a planned Civil War medicine museum set to open next year on the Pry Farm a "match made in heaven. " The Pry House Field Hospital Museum and Outdoor Educational Center would display Civil War medicine artifacts and educate the public about the medical history, Howard said in a phone interview. The National Park Service is working out final details with the Frederick, Md.,-based National Museum of Civil War Medicine to open the center at the battlefield by April, Howard said.