Some physical changes have occurred at our museum building in the last month. The building served as the county jail and sheriff’s home from 1913 until early 1972 when the last of the inmates were moved to a new jail. Obviously, the building has endured over a hundred years of storms and bad weather and requires some TLC periodically.
In the month of September we had several locations in the brickwork tuckpointed as well as many of the joints in the limestone plinth stones that serve as the foundation for the building. In addition, three of our concrete entry steps were torn out and replaced and the stairwell to the south entrance had new concrete caps stones replaced that were deteriorating.
To make way for masonry repairs, we had the old north side wooden access ramp torn down so that the masons could do their work and the ramp was replaced with a new aluminum access ramp. Thanks to a grant from the city of Marion, half of the masonry work was covered and split the bill in half for us.