By mid-September, Front Street in Poulsbo will be home to a maritime museum and visitor’s center.
“We’re the best new thing in town,” said Jim Shields, Poulsbo Historical Society board president. “You can quote me on that.”
Marc Abshire, executive director of Poulsbo’s Chamber of Commerce, agreed.
“It’s true,” Abshire said. “I don’t think it’s an overstatement.”
The building, at 19010 Front St., opened for a “sneak peek” Aug. 8. Open for only 10 hours, Abshire estimated “well over 500 visitors” walked through the building. The historical society even exceeded their goal of 40 new members, and signed up 60.
“We really feel like being co-located is going to draw more people to both of the services we offer,” Abshire said. “That’s kind of the overview of it.”
Shields said, “It’s been a partnership that just … logically fell into place.”
Poulsbo’s Historical Society has another museum, located in City Hall, on Moe Street, but they’ve been trying for a while to find a spot for a maritime museum.
More than 500 people visited the Maritime Museum and Visitor’s Center on Front Street Aug. 8 during the sneak preview. Photo by Michelle Beahm
“We’re limited in space there (in City Hall),” Shields said. “We haven’t had room to display all our things. We’ve had rotating displays go through there. … Reliance on the waterfront and lodging and fishing and boating and transportation, we just ended up with a whole lot of (maritime) stuff, so we needed a way to display it. We needed a way to get it out to the public.”
Shields said the historical society has been trying to find a location for a second museum “for a long time,” and looked at “several places in town,” but were never successful.
After their new building became available, the historical society and the chamber teamed up and got underway with repairs.
“We’ve had it a month, and virtually rebuilt the whole place,” Shields said.
Repairs include painting, removing and constructing walls, carpeting and installing an ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) public bathroom, which wasn’t completed at the sneak peek.
“It’s sweat labor, mostly,” Abshire said of the repairs. “We’ve had to hire for the official stuff, the electrical and the stuff you need coding for. All the rest of it’s sweat labor.”
Abshire said all the work and what they’re accomplishing “doesn’t happen without a ton of volunteers.”
“Pretty much everybody here is doing this really on a volunteer basis,” Abshire said. “It’s people that love Poulsbo, and so it’s a voluntary nonprofit, total-community effort.”
Abshire said it was important for both the historical society and the chamber of commerce to have a presence on Front Street, because of the large amount of traffic.
“It’s going to be a very busy visitor’s center here,” he said.
He added that people who stop in for the visitor’s center might then notice the museum, and walk through it, as well, especially since the museum has free admission.
A visitor reads a poem inscribed on a canoe in the Maritime Museum.
Photo by Michelle Beahm
The maritime museum will include a library, displays about logging, the saw mill, the mosquito fleet, fishing, Native American history and more. There will even be boats displayed on the side lot (also owned by the society and chamber), some of which will be completed, some of which will be actively worked on.
“It’s a working museum,” Abshire explained. “They’ll have guys restoring boats and things on site.”
But the museum’s not completed yet, and the amount of items on display Aug. 8 was minimal. So why open it up to visitors?
“Because of the Street Dance and all the people coming into town, we thought, hey, this would be a good way to kind of (show people) what it’ll look like,” Shields said. “They’ve been real excited about it.”
Also happening on Aug. 8 was the Poulsbo Block Party (formerly known as the Street Dance), the Pacific Northwest Cruiser’s Pirate Party and a five-year anniversary celebration for Poulsbo’s Valholl Brewery, besides just being a warm, sunny weekend in North Kitsap.
Shields said the feedback they’d heard was “incredibly positive.”
“We talk about things just flowing into place,” Shields said. “The partnership with the chamber, the HDPA (Historic Downtown Poulsbo Association) support — both financial and resource-wise — it’s apparently such a good idea that everything’s just clicking into place on it.”
Abshire added, “If it’s a good idea, usually, things go smoothly. If it’s not such a good idea, you have to push, push, push, push.”
The partnership between the Poulsbo Historical Society and the Poulsbo Chamber of Commerce appears to be a very good idea.
For more information about the museum/visitor’s center, visit poulsbohistory.com and poulsbochamber.com. Anyone interested in volunteering can email poulsbohistorycoordinator@gmail.com.
