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Broken pipe damages several rooms at Arms museum
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A leaking water pipe in a wall on the second floor of the Arms Family Museum of Local History caused considerable damage to several rooms in the 1905 structure — including the first-floor dining room.
By EMMALEE C. TORISK
YOUNGSTOWN
When Bill Lawson arrived at the Arms Family Museum of Local History about 8 a.m. Jan. 8, water had only recently ceased its flow through the plaster ceiling and down the walls of the original period dining room on the first floor.
One split copper water pipe in a wall on the second-floor Benjamin Franklin Wirt Collection gallery was the culprit.
“It was showering for hours before we found it,” said Lawson, executive director of the Mahoning Valley Historical Society.
Lawson added that the line break happened sometime between 5:30 p.m. Jan. 7, when he left the museum for the evening, and 7:30 a.m. Jan. 8, when the building and grounds supervisor arrived there to find it “literally raining in the dining room.”
Per the historical society’s disaster preparedness plan, the supervisor immediately turned off the water, Lawson said, but the damage to sev-eral rooms in the 1905 Arts & Crafts-style residence at 648 Wick Ave. already had been done.
Lawson isn’t yet sure how much the repair work will cost, or when the museum — which already was closed for the remainder of January to switch exhibits — will reopen. He’s also not clear on what caused the pipe to burst in the first place; it could’ve been the extremely low temperatures, he said, or maybe it simply failed.
In the dining room, which remained exactly how Olive F.A. Arms left it to the historical society in 1961 and sustained heavy damage, 80 percent of the ceiling was saturated with water. Portions of the varnished, blue-green walls had to be stripped of their canvaslike covering. Water sat atop the dining-room table, chair cushions and area rug, almost destroying the historic furnishings.
A large chunk of one of the table’s melon-ball legs even fell out.
Directly below the dining room, in the basement boiler room, water was “pouring out,” ruining the control panels for the boilers and heating, ventilation and air-conditioning system, Lawson said. The boilers and air-handling units themselves were not harmed, however, and are running on manual controls.
Elsewhere in Greystone, damage was not as severe.
In the first-floor sitting room, which adjoins the dining room, spots mark where water “leached out” of the stonework and brick on the wall and fireplace, Lawson said.
Upstairs, a few small sections of damaged wall have been cut out, and the carpets there are now mostly dry. Though some office supplies stored in a closet were a casualty of the burst pipe, no collections were harmed.
All undamaged collections were moved for safekeeping, damaged and destroyed items were removed, and the floors, ceilings and walls that were affected were dried out.
Fortunately, Lawson said, the line break happened after the museum had closed for the month after its “Memories of Christmas Past” exhibit, which ran through Jan. 5 and featured a number of borrowed decorations. Most of those items already had been removed.
Lawson added that the historical society plans to recruit the help of professional museum conservators to fully restore the dining room and its furnishings. This restoration process must adhere to the Secretary of the Interior’s standards, which Lawson referred to as “somewhat time-consuming.” The conservators will study fabric samples and techniques used by the original artisans to create the paint colors, for example, then will prepare a report and treatment plan.
“We appreciate the historical value of the home, and we’re going to do it right,” Lawson said. “As with anything we do, we’re going to do our research, and recreate or preserve as best we can.”
Leann Rich, manager of education and external relations for the Mahoning Valley Historical Society, said though the Arms Family Museum is closed for the time being, the historical society’s website will be periodically updated as the restoration project progresses.
In addition, Mahoning Valley Historical Society programs still will be at the Tyler History Center in downtown Youngstown and in area classrooms. The archives library will remain open as well.
For more information, visit http://mahoninghistory.org.