Chapter 12: Contributing to a Renaissance in Winchester

The next four chapters of A Bicentennial Crossroads describe how the Crossroads: Change in Rural America host organizations’ implementation of their activities illustrated and responded to dynamics within their communities and to ongoing change in rural Illinois.

The opening of the Old School Museum in 2010 coincided with and contributed to the beginning of a trend toward economic and cultural revitalization in downtown Winchester (population 1,600). The museum’s hosting of Crossroads: Change in Rural America furthered its participation in that renaissance.^[1]

The school that previously occupied the building in which the museum is housed moved to another location in 1958. Afterward, the building was used for various purposes, including furniture storage and apartment housing. When Tricia Demby Wallace and her husband, Andy, purchased it with the goal of establishing a museum, it had been mostly vacant for several years. To say that it required extensive cleaning, repair, and renovation before it could welcome the public would be an understatement, as evinced by before-and-after photographs available for viewing on the history page of the museum’s website. With help from area residents, including Wallace’s cousin, Janis Dappert, and several other members of her family, they managed to transform the edifice into a museum of local history and culture around the same time that interest in reinvigorating the town square and adjacent areas in Winchester began to grow.^[2]

Wallace noted that when the Old School Museum opened its doors, many of the storefront buildings downtown were unoccupied. Since then, however, “I’ve seen a really, really remarkable increase in people taking over those old buildings, putting little stores in them,” she said. “The last two mayors have had a lot to do with that—really trying to get people interested in bringing businesses back to the square.”

Although Wallace grew up in New York and New Jersey (and still makes her primary residence in the Northeast), she and her family regularly made extended visits to Winchester, where her mother was raised. “I remember as a little girl, walking or driving uptown with my mom. There were two grocery stores, there was the movie theater, there were shoe stores, clothing stores—you know, there was a lot to do. If you went uptown, you spent the afternoon, and you went from store to store. And without that, people just kind of run in the bank, and they go home. But I think it’s starting to turn around. The drugstore’s up on the square again and the little grocery store,” she commented.^[3]

The grocery store to which she referred, the Great Scott! Community Market, is owned by a local cooperative, and much of its merchandise is locally grown. It has generated considerable interest throughout the region and beyond since opening in 2018. Scott County residents no longer have to drive to Jacksonville or Pittsfield to buy groceries. (That residents of one of the foremost food-producing regions in the country would be unable to purchase groceries locally might seem ironic, but it is not an especially unusual state of affairs in rural Midwestern communities at present.)^[4]

Additionally, “The city just bought the old bank building, and they’re going to move city hall back onto the square, which I think is going to make a big difference because it will bring more people into town,” Wallace remarked.

Wallace has found the opportunity to strengthen her connection with her mother’s hometown, where many of her relatives still live, meaningful and rewarding. “My memories are just so wonderful–playing on the farm with my cousin, probably where we shouldn’t have been, down in the barn. Just a wonderful farm experience–I’m thrilled to have had it,” she said. “When I was a really little girl, the first four years of my life, I lived in New York City, so I was going from one extreme to the other,” she added. “It really broadened my outlook and led me to understand that there are different ways people live.”

She continued, “I love that little town, and I’m really happy to see people taking a great deal of civic pride again. I think the museum played a part in that. We redid that building and opened it, and I think it helped people to see that, yeah, people really do believe in this town, and I think it got some response.”^[5]

Hosting Crossroads garnered substantial publicity for the Old School Museum, including articles in the Scott County Times^[6] and the Jacksonville Journal-Courier^[7] and coverage on a Decatur television station.^[8] Additionally, the museum’s involvement in Museum on Main Street was partly responsible for prompting Illinois Stories, a public television program broadcast across much of Illinois, to profile the museum in 2019.^[9]

It also enhanced the museum’s ongoing contribution to the revitalization of downtown Winchester, according to Wallace. “We were so thrilled to be able to participate in that program [Museum on Main Street], and it was really wonderful. It was a lot of work—there’s no denying it—but it was really good for the community. I really believe that. They took a great deal of pride in just knowing that the Smithsonian was coming to Scott County because there’s a certain panache with that name,” she said. “Many people have told me that they were happy and proud to have had that in their town, so I feel really good about that.”^[10]

The Old School Museum’s engagement with Crossroads: Change in Rural America and many of the museum’s other activities represent responses to the socioeconomic trends that the exhibition itself described. Much the same can be said in reference to all of the Crossroads host organizations in Illinois. Each of those organizations works within a perpetually evolving context, and each seeks to contribute toward sustaining and enhancing the cultural vitality of its community while adapting to changes and challenges as they arise. Their hosting of Crossroads complemented those efforts.