Joplin Museum Complex Boards to Sit On Question of Union Depot

We mentioned earlier today that City Manager, Mark Rohr, was to give a presentation to the boards that oversee the Joplin Museum Complex on moving from Schifferdecker Park to a restored Union Depot building. Thanks to Morgan Schutters, of KODE tv, we now know how the meeting unfolded.

In the presentation, Mr. Rohr estimated the budget for the restoration of the building and associated costs would be around 7.7 million dollars. Of that 7.7 million dollars, no new taxes would be required (unlike the Joplin Museum Complex’s failed attempt to take over Memorial Hall) and it would be funded entirely by existing sources. Much of this would be done using currently available tax credits. Even more importantly, after the planned restoration of the Depot, the building would qualify as a Smithsonian approved museum. We belief, but have not yet confirmed, that this is related to the Smithsonian Affiliation program – in which museum affiliates are eligible to host Smithsonian exhibits and collections. To do that, the Smithsonian requires the museum to be:

“…a viable institution, capable of caring for, protecting, and exhibiting collections in a manner consistent with the standards set by the American Association of Museums, and meeting specific requirements for long-term care and maintenance of Smithsonian collections, as set forth in the Smithsonian’s Collections Management Policy.”

(This status, one would presume, should ease the fears raised by Museum Director Brad Belk last year on the ability to safeguard the JMC’s collections (currently collecting dust and cat hair in the current location).)

Quoted in the report, board member Angie Besendorfer, implied that “a lot of questions” still need to be answered before the boards could make a decision. Likewise, the board told Mr. Rohr that it would need more time to think about the issue.

Should the boards decide to agree to the plan to move the museum into a renovated Depot building, we will be wonderfully and happily surprised. However, we fear that the board members made their minds up quite some time ago. If they haven’t, we urge all those who want to continue to see Joplin move forward on the rise, to once again believe that better days are still ahead, to speak up and out. If you know a board member, tell them you support the move to the Depot. It is an urgent issue which has been delayed for too long, and as Mr. Rohr noted in the meeting, time is running out on the means to make it happen without extra cost to the city and her residents.

Joplin City Manager to Address JMC Boards

A step forward or a step backward may be the result of today’s meeting of City Manager Mark Rohr and Architect Chad Greer, with the boards of the Joplin Museum Complex. As reported here in the Joplin Globe, Rohr and Greer will put on a presentation with the hope of convincing the board members to affirm the hope of moving the Joplin Museum Complex to a restored Union Depot.

We wish Mr. Rohr the best of luck, but given the past attitudes of the board members, as well Museum Director Brad Belk, the presentation will likely be falling on deaf ears. While the city controls the purse strings which fund the museum, the city council so far has been unwilling to exert much in the way of pressure on the museum on what would be a spectacular combination of locating Joplin’s history inside Joplin’s history.

The reluctance to use the Depot as a new home for the museum stranded on the edge of town is akin to the same apathy which resulted in the destruction of many of Joplin’s most treasured architectural features. It’s far easier to cast an old building onto a rubbish heap to join others than to envision it as part of a brighter and more imaginative future of the city.

Patrick Murphy Living History Event, March 17, 2011

For those of you who might want to learn more about one of Joplin’s most successful Irish immigrants, The Dream Theatre Company and Historic Murphysburg Preservation Inc, will be putting on a living history event on the life and times of Patrick Murphy tonight from 5:30 to 8:30 pm at the First United Methodist Church and the Olivia Apartments.

For more details, check out this link.

Joplin Celebrates St. Patrick’s Day

 

Thomas Connor, an immigrant from Ireland, was one of Joplin's wealthiest citizens.

With sons and daughters of Ireland calling Joplin home from its earliest days, it’s not surprising to know that the celebration of St. Patrick’s Day is more than a hundred years old in Joplin.  The Joplin News Herald noted the events held on March 17, 1908 and claimed that the day began with a “typical Irish fog enwrapping the city,” with every flag pole decorated with the Irish flag.  Thousands of green shamrocks decorated the lapels of Joplinites across the city, the paper declared.

In describing the events, the News Herald noted, “The Irishman lives everywhere, and everywhere has he well-wishers who long with him for the time when oppression and wrong in his native soil will cease to be and the Emerald Isle return to the control of the native son.”  I

Beyond political discourse, the paper reported that the Irish and those who intended to celebrate the day with them, were to attend an observance at a “little old church that was the religious home of Joplin Catholics for so many years.”  The program consisted of a boys’ choir singing “God Save Ireland,” the Catholic priest, Father Clinton singing “The Wearing of the Green,” and a instrumental selection from Miss Margaret Williams, Masters William and John Joseph Hennessey.

Patrick Murphy, also an Irish immigrant, was the benefactor and namesake of Murphy Park.

The instrumental was then followed by a recitation by a Father Lyona, another song, “Then You’ll remember Me” by Miss Anna Toohey, a selection from Mrs. E.F. Cameron, a song from Mrs. Will Moore, another instrumental, “The Irish Dance” again from Ms. Toohey, “The Irish Immigrant” by Mrs. W.F. Maher with another recitation from Father Lyona, “Kathleen Mavourneen” sung by Mrs. Kachelski; a concertino solo and song by D.M. Sayers, and concluded with the boys’ choir singing “My Country Tis of Thee.”

 

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

 

Source: Joplin News Herald