$10,000 donation solves museum’s A/C problem
SAXONBURG — Thanks to a donation of $10,000 from two local attorneys, the persistent air conditioning problems at the Saxonburg Museum are soon to be a thing of the past, and the museum will finally be able to replace its aging — and now completely broken — air conditioner and furnace.
“This will help preserve everything inside of the museum, and provide a more comfortable atmosphere for giving tours and different events,” said Brooke Wamsley, vice president of Friends of Saxonburg Museum, the nonprofit which operates the museum.
The donation comes from Tom King and Tom Breth of the law firm Dillon King McCandless Coulter & Graham, on behalf of both the Evelyn Rodgers Trust and the Glenn Logan Trust, with $5,000 coming out of each fund.
At a Saxonburg council meeting last month, the issue of the air conditioning at the museum came up for discussion. The council chose to, in the words of council president Aaron Piper, “kick the can down the road” and have the old air conditioner serviced rather than spend money on a brand new A/C and furnace.
At the council meeting on Tuesday, Sept. 17, borough manager Steven May reported that the air conditioner had given out completely.
“It has permanently seized up and it’s not operational,” May said. “I did a walk through the museum this afternoon. It’s a little smelly in there.”
According to Wamsley, both the air conditioner and furnace have been in need of replacement for years.
“Fred Caesar, the previous Museum curator, had brought it to the council's attention multiple times,” Wamsley said. “Nothing had been done.”
The old air conditioning unit dates back to the early ’90s and relied on a type of refrigerant called R22, which is no longer being produced or imported into the U.S.
Now with $10,000 secured, the borough — which still owns the museum building — will now look at multiple quotes for air conditioners and furnaces.
According to Wamsley, the museum is still open as usual, and the faulty air conditioning has done no long-term damage to the museum’s sensitive artifacts.
In addition to the money raised for new climate control, the museum also has been hard at work raising money to preserve its replica of the Brooklyn Bridge, which stands at Roebling Park adjacent to John Roebling’s original wire rope workshop.
The Friends of the Saxonburg Museum set up a booth at Sprankle’s Octoberfest to collect donations earlier this month through a basket raffle, and collected $1,063 in funds. Over the past month, the group also picked up $1,310 through their ongoing GoFundMe campaign, as well as $540 through other donations, for a total of $2,913 in funds collected for the bridge restoration in roughly four weeks.
