By Sadie Koehler, Walsh University Museum Studies Intern

My name is Sadie and I am a museum studies intern from Walsh University. I am organizing the Massillon Museum’s Blueprint collection. The collections storage facility was renovated in 2010 to accommodate many of the 100,000 items, but the staff had not found a way to accommodate the hundreds of blueprints in the collection, as a collection of 900 blueprints was donated to the Museum. Over the last 4 years, several other volunteers have inventoried the blueprints to initially understand the scope of the collection.

I am working to unpack these blueprints from their temporary storage during the collection storage renovation. There are about 500 blueprints that will be kept in the museum’s collection, which come from the Massillon area, including the canal, railroads, houses, businesses, and other buildings, as well as blueprints from nearby cities and towns that do not have a historical society to properly care for them. My job is to sort through the ones specific to Mallalieu, Ross, Roberts, and Doll architectural firm. Their blueprints were created from the 1950s through the 1980s. I am assisting Archivist Mandy Altimus Pond to evaluate which blueprints are to be kept in the museum collection and which blueprints need to go to the appropriate historical society that would serve as a better home for them. For example, there is a blueprint for a home in Pueblo, Colorado. The likelihood of someone knowing to research that home in the Massillon Museum’s collection is slim. So this blueprint will be better served by a historical society in Colorado.

The blueprints that are kept here at the museum include: Massillon, Dover, Beach City, and New Philadelphia. All the other blueprints go to their respective historical societies including cities like: Canton, Coshocton, Elyria, and North Canton. There are even some blueprints from out of state, including places as distant as Texas, California, Florida, and Colorado. Once evaluated, the blueprints are labeled with their architectural number (assigned by Mallalieu, Ross, Roberts, and Doll by their year and project number), the subject of the blueprint, and the location of the structures. These will then be properly stored by subject, such as churches, houses, or businesses.

All the blueprints with unknown locations or only the name of the building are kept here at the museum and are added to the inventory. With these unknowns, I take as much information from them as I can and add them to the document. Soon we will be reappropriate blueprints from other towns to their proper destination, as well as properly housing those that will be added to the Museum’s collection. Proper storage will allow us to preserve, conserve, and protect these priceless documents for the future generations to come.

Pictures by: Sadie Koehler