FAIRFIELD – Carnegie Historical Museum in Fairfield continues to undergo renovations and improvements in 2024 just as it has in recent years.

The museum is replacing 44 windows in an attempt to both restore the building to its 1892 appearance, and to make it more energy efficient. Carnegie Historical Museum Curator-Manager Jake Schmidt said the current windows are not the original ones, but were installed in 1966. The new windows will be taller at 11 feet and take up the whole window frame, whereas now the museum is only using the bottom half of each window frame with the top half boarded up.

Schmidt said the new windows will allow in more natural light and protect the artifacts inside from ultra violet light. The windows will cost about $446,000, which is coming from the Carnegie Museum Foundation. Schmidt said they still have to raise about $20,000, and he’s confident they will reach that goal.

Schmidt noted that the current windows are extremely drafty, something he notices on windy days.

Kelly Glass Inc. of Peoria, Illinois, began installing the windows on Tuesday, April 9. Schmidt said the third floor windows with an arch at the top are the most difficult to do because of the fine-tuning to their frames. He said the contractor expected to install about one window per day. The museum’s basement windows will not be replaced in this round of renovations.

NEW ARTIFACTS ON DISPLAY

In addition to the new windows, the museum showed off a few new artifacts to a group of homeschool students on Friday, April 12. Heather Blakely is a teacher in the Homeschool Assistance Program in the Fairfield school district, and she brought a group of six homeschool kids to the museum to learn about local history.

“We like to explore local attractions because it’s important to know the history of Fairfield,” Blakely said. “There’s so much here that we don’t take advantage of.”

Blakely said the homeschool students try to visit the museum once a year.

One set of artifacts the kids had fun with was some reproductions of Native American “water whistles,” wooden containers with water inside that produce a whistling sound when tipped over. Schmidt said the museum actually had two water whistles in its collection from the Zuni tribe of modern-day New Mexico, but nobody knew that’s what they were.

“I was giving a tour to somebody who knew quite a bit about American Indians, and they said, ‘I think that is a water whistle,’” Schmidt said. “I did some research and found that two of our jugs are water whistles. We never took them out because we would never dare play with them. Some of the stuff we’ve had for 130 years, and we’re still learning about it.”

Schmidt said Native American tribes made water whistles to mimic the howls and cries of animals such as wolves and condors. Schmidt was able to find a person who makes reproductions of Peruvian Inca water whistles, so he purchased three of them for the museum, so patrons can tip them and hear the whistling themselves.

“The kids love these. They go crazy for them,” Schmidt said.

Another artifact the homeschool kids enjoyed listening to was a music box donated by the Copeland family. The box uses a hand-powered spring to rotate a metal disc with small pins that pluck metal teeth, causing them to vibrate and produce notes. Schmidt said the museum has 30 discs, so the box could play 30 songs, but he said it’s a chore to change the discs so they don’t. He said former museum curator Mark Shafer said this music box was made in 1905, and that today it would sell for $5,000.