Olympia City Council should support creation of a museum in old firehouse | Opinion

Olympia is the only state capital in the U.S. that doesn’t have a museum. We have no place for residents or visitors to learn Olympia’s history, to acquaint themselves with the tapestry of its past and present cultures, or to experience its unique arts. Oddly, there isn’t even a place that explains how Olympia became the state capital, which is quite a dramatic tale.

That’s why the Olympia Arts and Heritage Alliance (AHA) has applied to the City of Olympia to create such a museum in the city-owned, 1912 building at the corner of Capital Way and State Street downtown. The building, used in the past as a city hall, fire station, child care center, and home for various nonprofits, is now vacant, and AHA is one of two applicants who wants to use it.

The other applicant wants to buy the building from the city and create a boutique hotel. This would mean the public would lose control over the future of one of downtown’s important historic buildings. If the hotel failed to thrive, the new owners could sell the building, or demolish it and replace it with something new.

AHA has a longer view of both the past and the future. We believe that remembering a community’s history helps us maintain our unique identity. And with every passing year, we are creating more history and more artwork that is worth preserving. Without a museum to collect, curate, share and explore these expressions, they will be easily lost.

This is especially important to the preservation of the history of Olympia’s racial and cultural diversity. We should teach the full and accurate history of Indigenous peoples’ dispossession from their land, and their remarkable progress in restoring their culture and sovereignty.

During the last few years a meaningful reconciliation between the Squaxin Tribe and the City of Olympia has taken root. A generation from now, when a child asks “Why does the Squaxin flag fly over city hall?” their parents — having been to the AHA museum — should be able to answer that question.

There is also a story to be told and preserved about how racially restrictive covenants kept Black and brown people from buying houses in Olympia, and how the civil rights movement and fair housing laws sought to change that.

In fact, the history and identity of a city is all about its diverse peoples and cultures and how they evolve over time. We should be preserving the arts and histories of all the refugee and immigrant peoples who have become part of Olympia. Hmong, Cambodian, Somali, Bangladeshi, and many other peoples are now Olympians, but how much will our grandchildren know about their lives and the challenges they faced?

Even more important, how much will our grandchildren learn about the progress our community has made in becoming a welcoming, equitable, open-minded, creative and civically healthy capital city?

There are many reasons why every other American state capital has a museum. But we’d like to think our reasons are unique to Olympia: our appreciation for our stunningly beautiful natural setting, our growing diversity, our openness to cultural innovation, the value we place on our historic buildings, and our devotion to the practice of democracy and public engagement.

We think those are more than enough reasons for the City Council to support the creation of a lasting legacy in the old City Hall/Firehouse building: a museum that will preserve and celebrate what makes Olympia Olympia.

Thomas Henderson is the current chair of the Olympia Arts and Heritage Alliance. He is a retired construction engineer and facility director for the state of Washington.