Keeper of Loudoun’s Past Silenced by Mold

The museum, which is tucked behind Leesburg’s town hall, has been closed since mid-December when workers found the mold while sprucing up the 19th Century building at the corner of Loudoun and Wirt streets.

“It drives me crazy,” said a frustrated curator, Pam Stewart, while surrounded by many of the museum’s 7,600 items, most now wrapped or boxed while awaiting a new temporary home. “We want to show these items.”

If work progresses as planned—and if money doesn’t run out—the goal is to have at least part of the museum reopened this spring during tourist season, with a more extensive reopening to come this summer.

Founded in the late-1960s in a log cabin still on the property, much of the Loudoun Museum today is housed in a building once home to a furniture/undertaker business that eventually gave way to the Do Drop Inn, which was one of the few African American businesses in Leesburg in the early 20th Century.

The town owns the building and adjacent log cabin, which the museum rents at the bargain rate of $1 a year. And while in the middle of an effort to update the main building, which included fresh paint and new hardwood flooring, workers discovered that moisture had seeped into the building’s back wall causing mold to grow. Before that, the museum’s staff of two—Stewart and Director of Museum Operations Beth Friedmann—had planned to keep part of the museum open to visitors during renovations.

“This is one of our favorite places,” said Friedmann, standing in the museum’s Children’s Discovery Room, which is now lined with sheets of plastic. “This is where the kids would play while their parents toured the museum … We just couldn’t allow people in here with mold.”

She adds with a sigh: “We hadn’t anticipated this.”

The closure is just the latest blow in what has been a tumultuous year for the keeper of Loudoun’s past. A year ago, the museum was the victim of a steep cost-cutting move, as the county reduced its annual contribution to the museum in half, forcing the museum to eliminate two positions. If the same happens this winter, renovations might have to be put on hold until money is found elsewhere.

Currently, most of the museum’s items, including 19th Century furniture, decades-old quilts and Civil War era artifacts mostly donated by area residents, are being stored in the cramped top floor of the museum.

“We just have more items than we can store, and more items than we can show,” Stewart said. “The community has been so generous to us.”

But they will all soon have to move, as that room will also soon be gutted and made over. In response, the staff is desperately scouring the county for storage room to house all the pieces in one space. There was talk of breaking up the collection and storing it at several different sites. But with separation comes lack of oversight and fear that some items could be damaged.

Step in county officials. In January, museum staff asked the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors to look in the county’s inventory of buildings for room to keep Loudoun’s artifacts secured while the museum is shored up.

“I’m sad the museum has closed. I think it is a little jewel," said Supervisor Andrea McGimsey (D-Potomac), before the board voted to launch the search.

As of Friday, Stewart said their effort appears to be paying off, as a site has been identified—though, she wouldn’t reveal which one as terms were still being finalized.

The plan now is to use whatever space is secured for at least three years for items not on display. Over that time, according to Stewart, the museum then hopes to collect enough donations to build its own permanent storage facility—one, of course, free of mold.

"We're trying to find creative solutions," Stewart said, while looking down at newly acquired batch of graying documents donated by a former Ashburn resident. "This is the county’s museum. This is not about Beth and me."

See www.loudounmuseum.org to learn more.