Western Reserve Fire Museum

About Us

Collections

Written by jonnyh : Posted on January 14, 2013 : Comments Off

Preserving the past starts with collections

Museums are, first and foremost, in the business of collecting stuff. But curating collections is not as easy as you might think.

On a daily basis the Fire Museum collects numerous artifacts and archival materials, everything from photos to fire apparatus. But taking them in is just the beginning of the process.

To oversee and help implement the rest of the collecting process the Fire Museum is forming a collections committee. It will be made up of volunteers, historians, curators, and members of the board.

If you would like to volunteer your help with the Fire Museum collections and/or have fire related artifacts and/or archival materials that you would like to donate to Fire Museum, please call us at 216.664.6312.

Collections

Cataloging Projects

With more than 3,000 fire house journals, thousands of photographs and innumerable artifacts, our collections are as rich as they are varied. Cataloging all these items is a major undertaking. What’s more, volunteers are doing all of the work.

One of our first collections projects is organizing, boxing and cataloging our journals. This project consists of sorting the journals by company, cleaning each of the journals, and then boxing them. Once boxed an inventory will be taken and a catalog created. The cataloged journals will then be readily accessible for research by both professional and amateur historians alike.

The department journals are a tremendous source of historical information of both the fire service and everyday life in Cleveland, Ohio.

If you would like to help organize and catalog our collections please call the Fire Museum at 216.664.6312.

Journals re-boxed and organized.

Fire Museum Storage project underway.

The photo above shows the the Fire Museum taking delivery of a 1952 American LaFrance pumper donated by Rick Rogel of Empire Die-casting. It’s in great condition and will become our parade vehicle.

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