THE SHARPSVILLE AREA HISTORICAL SOCIETY

To strengthen community ties by increasing awareness of our shared history

We engage the community using three strategies. First, the historic and architectural character of our headquarters building makes it a natural focus of engagement with the community. Not only is restoration of the building's architecture a goal for its own sake, it allows the building to more fully function both as museum space for the Society's collections as well as space for musical performances, lectures, and other community events. Second, our growing collection of photographs, documents and artifacts allows us go beyond their mere preservation and display; rather, the expanded scope of our archives increasingly enables us to offer context and to develop local history narratives using displays and publications in a variety of formats. Third, the Society has sponsored a number of cultural and community-building events. While fundraising was an initial motive, an otherwise underserved local community has come to rely upon the Society for producing these events.

We have shown a consistent capability for raising funds through both donations and fundraising projects. Our success in producing events and in making local history accessible is constantly evolving as we hone our skills and adapt to better engage our community.

Since 2010, we have completed the following projects toward the restoration of our National Register of Historic Places headquarters, built in 1882-84 as the First Universalist Church of Sharpsville: 1) purchase and installation of historically-appropriate laminated glass storm windows, for both energy savings as well as protection against breakage for the building's thirty historic glass windows; 2) complete replacement of the badly deteriorated slate roof with synthetic slate shingles matching the alternating bands of square and beveled shingles as well as the exuberant Victorian black and red colors of the original roof; 3) repair of the interior plaster and repainting to match the original color scheme; 4) restoration of the original walnut entry doors; 5) restoration of the stained glass windows; 6) rebuilding of the south chimney to its original height and with the original decorative brickwork, 7) new signage, 8) restoration of the ceiling of the Sunday school room with a decorative scheme matching the original, 9) rebuilding of the front steps in sandstone, and painting and repair of the exterior woodwork.
Also in this time, we have grown our collection of photographs, documents and artifacts relating to the history of Sharpsville from around 700 to nearly 2,000. We have expanded the display of a significant number of these items at our headquarters. We have produced two DVDs each featuring, in slide-show format, 100 captioned photos of Sharpsville in years past. We have completed the cataloguing our archives and have digitized a significant percentage of our holdings. We have added more digitized historical archives to our website (including Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps for Sharpsville for which we financed the digitization), produced a historically-themed calendar and coasters for sale, and produced two brochures for visitors to town. We have engaged the local school district in incorporating local history into the curriculum. In 2012, we also started a four to seven page bi-monthly newletter that features information on Society activities as well as containing a large portion of articles and photographs of historical interest.
Finally, we updated our organization's by-laws to reflect the current direction of the Society as well as best practices. In addition to purely fundraising events, we sponsored or co-sponsored 45 concerts, operas, stage productions, a community-building functions. In partnership with two other arts organizations and the local government, we erected a sign to list Community Events (including those of the Historical Society).