H. Lee White Maritime Museum looks for more spacious quarters

The museum is working with the Oswego Port Authority to discover a new potential site for the museum.

The museum has requested $500,000 from the county funds from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) to help with the new museum site.

“It’s in the initial review process now,” said Niess. “We’re waiting for some feedback before we submit the full application.”

The Maritime Museum was opened in 1982 by Rosemary Nesbitt, a professor at Wells College, Syracuse University, and SUNY Oswego, and a city of Oswego historian.

The museum owns and has several historic boats on display.

“We have our World War II national historic landmark tugboat,” Niess said. “We have a canal barge and the last remaining U.S. commercial fishing boat.”

Niess said the museum was refitting a schooner called Ontario.

“One of the missions of the museum is to protect and preserve our artifacts,” said Niess.

“We’ve done a good job in the current building, but it’s so small we can’t acquire any more artifacts.”

The museum, at 1 W. First St. in Oswego, started out in three rooms in the upstairs of the building. Nesbitt eventually extended the museum’s reach to the rest of the building.

Even with the whole building, Niess said it is still too small for the museum to handle larger projects and assemblies.

“This isn’t us saying, oh, we want a new building,” said Niess. “But we currently can’t do the programming for the community that we would like to do. Our big room can only hold 50 people. So if we have a large lecture with say 100 people, we have a problem.”

The public areas of the museum are only part of the issues with space that they are having.

Museum curator Michael Pittavino’s office doubles as the storage area for the museum. 

“We shoved him back here,” said Niess with a laugh.

To get to the curator/storage office, Niess had to leave the museum through the back, go through an enclosed back area, walking sideways through equipment and debris, to emerge at the door of his office. 

“We’re impacted as far as space goes, not just in the collection, but hiring new staff,” said Pittavino. “Where do we put them?”

Niess also said that the limited space limits the museum to doing projects during the warm weather months.

“We would love to do year-round programming,” Niess said, “work with the schools throughout the school year.”

Niess said the turn to the common core curriculum lowered the rate at which local schools visited museums in the past decade.

“For a long time, students came to the museum every year for tours,” said Niess. “The common core focused on STEM programs and kind of left out history and art from the equation.”

Niess noted there has been a shift in recent years to make sure art education is included in students’ programs, and changing the acronym from STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Math) to STEAM (the A added for Art).

“STEAM is the new buzzword,” Niess said. “We’re kind of going back to the old days.”

The Port of Oswego Authority owns the building used by the museum.

“They’ve been very supportive and encouraging and plan to help us any way they can,” Niess said. 

Bill Scriber, executive director for the Port of Oswego Authority, echoed Niess’ words.

 “We’ve been working with them for over a year to find the funding for a new museum,” Scriber said. “We’re looking to put the new building on the west dock.”

The museum is under lease at its current location until 2025.

Scriber said the current museum building was never intended to be used for anything like a museum.

“We want to get them out of that building ” said Scriber  “It was never meant for occupancy at this level. It originally was an office for a grainery.”

Scriber said the construction of a new building and marina is part of a bigger plan to attract more business to the harbor, including lake cruises.

“Lake cruises are in Lake Ontario now,” said Scriber.  “They haven’t been here because we don’t have a facility for when they dock. The building the museum is in now would work well for that purpose.”