Buffalo Culture: Reinstein Center may be used as educational space

By Mike Desmond
(Image above: The Reinstein Center (far right) sits beyond the main 1901 building of the Buffalo History Museum. All photos by Mike Desmond unless otherwise noted)

The Buffalo History Museum tells the story of Western New York, using three historical buildings on the edge of Delaware Park and Hoyt Lake.

That’s the landmark 1901 building, the white structure high above the lake; the adjacent Julia Boyer Reinstein Center, hidden in a clump of trees; and the nearby Resource Center on Forest Avenue.

Now it’s planning to spend more than $6 million dollars on the Reinstein Center to help with changes in the way the cultural center operates.

Buffalo’s Public Works Department opens bids April 1.

Director Melissa Brown says the cultural center is easing past the COVID hangover and moving forward with visitor numbers back to what they were, while that effort has limited plans to grow the museum’s mission.

“That has been a challenge with just trying to get that base back and understanding people are behaving a little bit differently., one thing we’re really sure of is the need for space,” she said.

That’s been an issue for years, leading to the past conversion of an old trolley barn on Forest Avenue into the Resource Center, renovating a closed-off basement area in the main 1901 building into 4,000 square feet of useable space five years ago and restoring windows and doors overlooking Hoyt Lake.

Brown said of the basement, “It had been shuttered, you know, essentially the heat had been disconnected, a brick wall had been put up and it was kind of like, this is what it is.”

She said the Penfold Portico is the end result: “I think that’s what donors were really excited by. They could understand the limitations of having a beautiful front porch that was completely inaccessible to the park we face. All those doors and windows were literally boarded up.”

That leads to use for events like the Goo Goo Dolls exhibit in the space later this year to celebrate their 40^th anniversary and Buffalo Seminary currently celebrating its 175^th anniversary in the portico gallery.

The portico also hooks into the rising catering revenue from more events held in the “1901 Building,” the museum’s landmark home.

“We’ve essentially doubled our catering revenue,” Brown said. “So we’re at about $120,000 in catering revenue annually. That helps offset our operating but, of course, all of our operating expenses have gone up. So we’re doing all right. But it’s always the finish line always keeps moving.”

While the Reinstein Center is ready to go out to bid, Brown has to consider the basics in the 1901 building.

“We want to be a history museum. We love being a history museum, but we don’t want the historic experience to be in the public amenities, like the bathrooms. We need that to be a 21^st Century experience,” Brown said. “So inaccessibility was a limitation and to this, to a certain extent, this building is challenging because it is, you know, an older building.”

There is even a water fountain now.

The Reinstein Center, once it’s done, will also be an older building, but it will be as new as federal tax laws allow for a 1920 building which needs major maintenance and restoration.

The structure was built as a home and music studio for Leonard Adams, with the lower level doors once home to his carriages and a view onto the smaller park lake.

Since it was a residence, there are public rooms and private rooms and a giant, decaying window to light the areas, which is visible from Elmwood Avenue.

Brown explains, “For us, it’s actually a wonderful opportunity, because it really lends itself to education space, smaller spaces that we don’t have in this building. So by day, we can use that for classrooms and things like that. But in the evening, if we wanted to rent this and then do like little breakouts or something, it could do that too.”

The construction plan also calls for a structure between the Reinstein Center and Elmwood which could be used for outdoor events.

Brown says this is all a $6.3 million project, with much of that already raised and the rest potentially on the horizon, and the plan is “shovel ready.”

The executive director reminds me this remains a history museum, telling the many stories of the people who live here and used to live here at a time when people seem more interested in history than they have been in a while.

“We’re trying to also think about how we’re sharing stories from all different perspectives, by our collaborations, by the programs we offer, by the digital content that might be available, by our podcast, which is, I think, one of our best resources,” Brown said.

Then there are history portions with issues: “We have tried to deal with different community relationships. We’ve tried to address head on our own complicity and not sharing those stories, or, worse yet, like in our indigenous gallery, making it seem like that’s a community that is back in history and not a community that’s with us right now,” Brown said.

The campus is located next to Scajaquada Creek, a sign of the past Indigenous history of this area.

Brown says there are plenty of stories, from the Indigenous community through the Erie Canal, through the Civil War years when the museum was started.

Looking at her own organization, Brown says there are questions and those can be hard questions: “In our programs, in our gathering spaces, in who we meet with, that helps us think about what? … Your counterpart, 100 years from now, might be sitting at this table asking about the people who are living here now.”