WESTBROOK – The days are counting down to the Westbrook Historical Society’s ribbon-cutting ceremony on March 7 at its new home in the Fred C. Wescott Building, and there’s still plenty of work to do.

Members this week are working to catalog and organize the thousands of pieces of Westbrook-related memorabilia, from posters to photographs to uniforms.

“Things aren’t in there perfectly yet,” the society’s treasurer, Nancy Curran, said Tuesday as she arranged a collection of small trinkets, including an antique wooden pencil sharpener, housed in a glass shelving unit.

But, said Mike Sanphy, the society’s president, “it’s coming together nicely.”

The museum moved from the second floor of the Stephen W. Manchester American Legion Hall at 17 Dunn St. to spacious rooms at the community center building.

The historical society is marking the occasion with an open house next Wednesday from 5-9 p.m. The official ribbon-cutting ceremony will be held at about 6 p.m., Sanphy said.

The society, which officially began in 1975, originally had little more than a spare classroom at the old Westbrook High School, then at 765 Main St, to call home. Of course, the society’s collection of artifacts and mementos was a fraction of the size it is now, and the society was grateful to have any place at all to keep it.

The society needed to find a new home, and quickly, in 2001, when Westbrook Housing bought the building on Main Street to convert into a new housing complex. The city agreed to help fund a transfer down the street to the American Legion Hall. At the time, the hall had a vacant upstairs, so the museum moved in, with the city footing the bill, for about $10,000 per year.

But it still was not an ideal space. As time went on, and the collection grew, the lack of workable space became clear. The room was also on the second floor, making it more difficult for visitors with limited mobility to visit the society or attend meetings and presentations.

So for some time, the society has been looking for a ground-floor home, and after the Wescott Junior High School at 426 Bridge St. closed in 2010, society members immediately saw the benefits of moving into the space.

The Wescott building now houses the community center and a number of other city services.

“There’s a lot more foot traffic over there, a lot more people, a lot more visibility,” Sanphy said.

On Tuesday, the society’s new room was adorned with shelving units, uniforms from all manner of professions, and even a pair of large, horse-drawn fire trucks that dominate one far wall.

Another valuable item is a large metal scale, kept under glass, that was used at the S.D. Warren mill. Curran said the scales were used in the mill’s research department.

“There were patents galore written in those labs,” she said.

In the center of the society’s new home is a long table with chairs, flanked by rows of bookshelves with volume after volume of records, certificates of birth and death, old deeds, legal documents of ownership and other records that will be available to anyone who wishes to come and do research, or just explore the city’s history.

“You’d be surprised how people like to look at old records,” Curran said.

Curran said the size of the room is impressive, but the move has also given the society a chance to really take stock of its collection, and take a more organized approach to presenting it.

“Before, we’d just find a place for something,” she said.

Nancy Curran, Westbrook Historical Society treasurer, arranges items housed in a glass shelving unit on Tuesday. The museum hosts on open house at its new home next week. (Staff photo by Sean Murphy)
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