Councilwoman Deb Hermann inspects construction at the Kansas City Museum.
Photo by Mike Ekey
Officials with the Kansas City Museum opened the facility last week to give members of the museum’s advisory board a sneak peek at some of the construction inside the historic home.
Closed since January, construction at the museum has mostly been done behind closed doors as crews have worked to remove all of the exhibits and displays. But as construction crews have started removing walls and other items built over the years, historians and others have discovered treasures hidden away behind the walls.
“It really shows, looking at it without all the museum exhibits, that this used to be a home,” said County Legislator Scott Burnett, who took the tour last Tuesday.
In one room, crews started to remove a sheetrock wall that was constructed to hold several museum displays. As they began to tear down the wall they discovered shelves built into the original wall that still contained the glass and other details built in by the Long family.
“This is quite impressive,” Advisory Board Chairman Gary Marsh said as tour guides from the city explained that they also suspected one of the home’s many intricate fireplaces still lies behind a part of the wall they have yet to bring down.
The tour, which took place in lieu of the regular meeting held by the advisory board, was done to give board members an up-close look of the construction that they have overseen in the past few months.
With only a few minor delays, officials with the city and Union Station said they expected the project to continue moving forward without any problems.
The Kansas City Museum’s Corinthian Hall closed to regular visitors earlier this year and is not expected to be open for the public until sometime in 2010. Plans call for a multi-million dollar window and door replacement project and a new air conditioning system to update the historic home.
Plans also include a complete rehabilitation of the first floor of the home. Officials with Union Station said they hope to make it look like it did when the Long family lived there.
Officials are planning the same kind of rehabilitation work on the Carriage House, which will be completed around the same time.
