Re: Bad Weather Delays Efforts to Begin Recovery

Date: February 22, 2004

"Dallas museum receives U.S. grant

By MARY McKEE
Fort Worth Star-Telegram


DALLAS -- Right now, the second floor of the Old Red Courthouse is mostly bare walls and echoing corridors.

But supporters of the landmark building are looking forward to the day when hundreds will visit to learn about Dallas County's history.

"It's a big story," said David Schulz, who is leading the fund-raising effort for the Old Red Museum of Dallas County History and Culture. "And not much of our history is well-articulated."

On Friday, the museum got a boost when U.S. Rep. Sam Johnson, R-Plano, announced that $350,000 in Housing and Urban Development funds have been approved for the museum, expected to open in July 2005.

The funds bring pledges for the project to $11.9 million, which is drawing close to the group's goal of $13.7 million in private dollars, Schulz said.

Johnson, a veteran of the Korean and Vietnam wars who was a prisoner of war in Hanoi for nearly seven years, will be among those featured in the museum.

"We're blessed to have this facility," said Johnson, who grew up in Dallas and graduated from Southern Methodist University. "This is going to be a beacon, a symbol that will draw people to Dallas."

Old Red has been undergoing renovations for the past few years as officials seek to return the 1892 four-story building at 100 S. Houston St. to public use and to restore the courthouse to its original grandeur.

The museum, which will include a first-floor gallery and the entire second floor, will focus on five themes: transportation, boosterism, diversity, entrepreneurship and image, officials said.

It will tell the stories of people such as Sarah Horton Cockrell, a single mother who built the first iron bridge across the Trinity River, and Anderson Bonner, a slave who accumulated 2,000 acres in north Dallas after he was emancipated.

Among the artifacts on display will be a chair and a rolling pin made by slaves, Confederate flags and uniforms, and the tin cup that Johnson used while he was a POW, project curator Alan Olson said.

"It's very difficult because an important event may be told in one or two artifacts," he said.

Even though preparing the museum is painstaking work, Schulz said, the historians working on the project see the value of what they're doing.

"Essentially, they've been making this a labor of love," he said. "They see the promise that this building holds." "