Johnstown Flood Museum to get makeover

Feb. 26--Exhibits at the Johnstown Flood Museum will undergo a complete makeover this year as the disaster is recounted through the eyes of a Presbyterian minister who witnessed the flood and its aftermath. The new exhibits will showcase three-dimensional images never seen by the public, flat panel screens and interactive stations.

The Cambria County community became synonymous with disaster in 1889 when torrential spring rains fell, weakening the structurally deficient South Fork Dam. On May 31, the dam broke, sending a 40-foot-high wall of water surging toward Johnstown, sweeping away churches, businesses and homes. The terrifying wave killed 99 families, leading to 98 children being orphaned. More than 2,200 people died. Since then, topography and torrents of water have shaped Johnstown, which sits at the bottom of the steep Conemaugh Valley.

Neither the exhibits nor the museum, housed in a former Carnegie Library built in 1891, have been updated since 1989, the flood's 100th anniversary. Visitors will learn much more about the flood of 1889, but also about two others that followed in 1936 and 1977. The late television anchor Walter Cronkite narrated reports about the last major deluge, which killed more than 40 people.

Richard Burkert, executive director of the Johnstown Area Heritage Association, said that since 1989, new research on the owners of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club and their nearby cottages has been done at the Cambria County Historical Society.

Hydrologists at the University of Pittsburgh's Johnstown campus have studied the timing and physics of the 1889 flood wave, which unleashed 20 million tons of water. The disaster had legal implications, too, because "standards for liability insurance came out of the flood," Mr. Burkert said.

Like Pittsburgh, Johnstown lies at the confluence of three rivers -- the Conemaugh, Little Conemaugh and Stony Creek.

One museum mainstay has been updated. Charles Guggenheim's Academy Award-winning documentary about the 1889 flood was recently digitized and captioned for the hearing impaired. The seats and interior of the theater where the film is shown also were upgraded,

The Johnstown Flood Museum doubled its photographic holdings when it acquired images from the estate of Irving London, the late Johnstown businessman who amassed 2,000 pictures that show the 1889, 1936 and 1977 floods. Mr. London owned the Camera Shop, which was housed inside his family's business, Rothstein's Jewelers.

The new exhibition also will show portraits of flood survivors.

"That's something technologically we couldn't do 27 years ago," Mr. Burkert said.

Construction documents will be completed in March. Work is expected to begin by summer and conclude by year's end. The project will cost $2.5 million. About 65 percent of that money has been raised, mostly from several Pittsburgh foundations, individual donors and businesses.

Paul Rosenblatt is principal of Springboard Design, an architectural firm on Pittsburgh's South Side, which is planning the building renovation and designing new exhibits. The museum's electrical and mechanical systems need to be brought up to 21st century standards, the architect said, adding that a furnace and boiler need to be replaced.

"The building is intact and it's in really good shape," Mr. Rosenblatt said.

The permanent exhibition occupies the museum's first and second floors. The brick building's third floor still has a running track that was part of a gym that was typically installed in Carnegie libraries of that era.

"One of the challenges the museum has faced ever since it opened is that the style of exhibition that was common at the time was very inflexible to change or evolution," Mr. Rosenblatt said..

Springboard Design developed a flexible exhibition system that will allow new information, artifacts, images and stories to be added as new discoveries are made.

"The old way of doing things wasn't very flexible. We are acknowledging the fact that the way history is told evolves over time. Arts and cultural institutions should be able to make those changes and evolutions without having to go back to the bank," Mr. Rosenblatt said.

A digital upgrade of a topographical map that shows the path of the 1889 flood will be done by Magic Lantern, an Oakland-based audio-visual production company that also will create some new interactive exhibits, Mr. Burkert said.

These improvements also will help better tell the story of the region's subsequent floods.

During the St. Patrick's Day Flood of 1936, a heavy snow melt plus spring rains inundated Johnstown with 14 feet of water in 24 hours. That year, President Franklin Roosevelt visited Johnstown and pledged to push for federal flood control. In 1938, the Congress authorized the widening and deepening of nine miles of channels in Johnstown's three rivers. When that work concluded, many Johnstown residents believed the city was "flood free."

Forty years passed and in July 1977, Johnstown received 12 inches of rain in six hours. The Laurel Run dam broke, flooding Tanneryville, a village northwest of Johnstown. The flood claimed the lives of 41 people.

"You can't really make a place flood free. Nature is not always going to cooperate," Mr. Burkert said.

Marylynne Pitz at mpitz@post-gazette.com, 412-263-1648 or on Twitter:@mpitzpg

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