Carpentry work is wrapping up on the Spring Street Museum’s new installations and handcrafted display cases that will showcase items that tell the history of Shreveport’s early days. A grand reopening is set for Tuesday.
A $200,000 renovation began last fall, according to Charlotte Walter of the Shreveport Committee of the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America.
Over the decades, the Dames amassed about 2,200 artifacts that tell bits and pieces of Shreveport’s history. Walter says Shreveport-based Twin Engine Labs has programmed four digital displays, including one for kids that is a matching game of Shreveport history.
“The interactive component is so great because what it’s doing is taking the museum into the 21st century. People expect that now. Good museums have that digital component,” Walter said.
This Civil War-era building with its New Orleans-style cast iron grill work was originally a bank. In the vault, fittingly, old currency will be displayed. Museum director Marty Loschen says Shreveport made its own currency in the 1800s. He admires sheets of it along with other currency like saloon tokens.
“It’s called obsolete currency now because it doesn’t have a backer. This is an entire uncut sheet, State of Louisiana,” Loschen said, who has worked with the Spring Street Museum for the past six years.
Shreveport Mayor Ollie Tyler will cut the ribbon Tuesday at 5:15 p.m. She will be joined by Bossier City Mayor Lo Walker.
The museum will be open Wednesdays through Fridays at least through the end of the month. Loschen says come June 1, due to state budget cuts, this Secretary of State museum may be reduced to one day a week.
If only the state could print more money today.
But like many “Friends” volunteer groups around the state, Walter says her group along with the Friends of the Spring Street Museum will make sure that the museum has enough funding to stay up and running.
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