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Guthrie newspaper building to be transformed into museum

The Oklahoma Historical Society is trying to save a 114-year old newspaper and printing building in Guthrie.

“The Oklahoma Historical Society first acquired the building in 1975 from the Guthrie Chamber of Commerce,” Director of Sites of the Oklahoma Historical Society Kathy Dickson said. “There was never real development plans for how it would be funded long-term.”

The government had a lot of funding available that could help renovate the building whenever the Oklahoma Historical Society bought the building, according to Dickson.

“The 1970s was a time of a lot of federal grants for historic preservation,” Dickson said. “I think the thought at the time was that they were going to get a lot of federal money to do work on this building and the state was going to fund the operation.”

When the building opened in 1981, it had  After struggling to fund employees, The Oklahoma Historical Society created an operating contract with the Logan County Historical Society.

“There was never sufficient funding to either repair the building or have it up and fully operating as a museum,” Dickson said. “It’s a huge industrial building, about 55,000 square-feet, with four floors, if you count the basement.”

In 2012, the building’s furnace failed and, without funding to repair it, the building continued to deteriorate. In order to preserve the historic building, The Oklahoma Historical Society is looking for the best option for the Guthrie building.

“If we are going to save the building, the best thing that would probably happen to it is if we put it into private hands,” Dickson said. “If we could find a company or an individual that would develop the building, make it an active part of downtown again and preserve the building, that would be the best outcome.”

With the long history of printing, one proposal suggests creating a small museum on the first floor of the building and using the rest of the space for 34 affordable senior housing units.

“So much history goes into buildings,” sophomore Cassidy Compton said. “Since news printing was so big in that time era, I think it is so cool that they are planning on putting a museum in that building.”

The Oklahoma Historical Society said it plans on keeping the original 1902-style interior and exterior intact in the renovation.

“I just like how people are now in the stage of not wanting to build any more new buildings,” Compton said. “They want to rejuvenate old ones. I am such a history nut that I love that part of the interior design and architecture. It used to be gutting the whole building and then building it new and modern so it looks nothing like the outside.”

The museum would have various pieces of historic printing equipment to showcase the beginning of the building, according to Dickson.

“It is really the center of the historic preservation district in Guthrie,” Dickson said. “The building is very important and very iconic to both Oklahoma and to Guthrie individually.”

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