Renovations Underway at Woodstock Museum

Wednesday, 1 May 2024 11:01

The Woodstock Museum will remain open while crews work on the cupola over the next two and a half months.

WOODSTOCK - If you've paid a visit the downtown Woodstock recently, you might have noticed some scaffolding in front of the Woodstock Museum.

Crews will be working on the round structure on top of the roof, also known as the cupola, over the next couple of months.

It hasn't been touched in about 20 years, so Museum Curator Karen Houston says they took a drone inside it recently and realized that it needed some work done.

"So that's what's happening right now. They're taking out the rotting wood, doing some painting, replacing the dome shingles that are going to be going on it, doing these kinds of things."

Houston says there are a lot of moving parts to this project. A crew just put the scaffolding up and another crew will put a coating on top to make it waterproof before carpenters, painters and metal workers arrive. The weather also needs to cooperate for this project to finish on time.

If everything goes well, Houston says the project shouldn't take too long.

"They're saying it should take about two and a half months, within that range. So May, June, and sometime in July we'll hopefully be done."

The Museum will remain open while the work is being done, you'll just have to enter through the side door. A large banner will be hanging on the scaffolding in the near future, directing people to the side door.

Houston says the Woodstock Museum was first constructed in 1853, and the building has also served as a market, public assembly hall, fire hall, police lock-up, council chambers and municipal offices over the years.

"The cupola is one of the defining characteristics of the Old Town Hall. Many 19th municipal buildings in Ontario adapted British architectural trends. The Italianate Revival style was popular at the time and includes classical elements like the domed roof-top structure."

The building underwent lots of restoration work between 1980 and 2000. The wooden roof was also replaced in 2018, but the cupola was untouched while that work was being done.

The building was designated as a national historic site in 1955.