Brookside S.O.S.

BALLSTON SPA — The Brookside Museum on Charlton Street in Ballston Spa may be closing in the near future, unless the community and government can provide enough funding to keep it open.

Michelle Arthur, Executive Director for the museum, said that they have operated at a loss for several years, but that they have always found a way to make things work despite the shoestring budget.

“We definitely did not have enough money to keep payroll going to pay the staff, myself included. We didn’t have enough money to pay anybody’s salaries,” she said.

In total, the museum currently has a team of six people, Arthur the Director, an Education Director, an Administrative Assistant, two Genealogical Research Assistants and a Shop Manager, according to the website.

“Then faced with that, we were forced with the probability of at least closing the doors to the museum and then figuring out how do we restructure from there,” Arthur continued. “What needs to happen, does the museum ultimately dissolve, do we restructure into a smaller organization, can we raise the funds to keep going?”

She said “we have grit, we have passion, we have professional expertise, but we don’t have enough money to keep the doors open.”

She described the museum as being for educating and collection, saying, “we teach and we collect, and we teach about the objects that we collect which relate to Saratoga county and related to about 200 years of history to the county.”

She continued by saying that the museum has existed since a group of fifth graders created it in 1957 as part of a sesquicentennial, or 150-year anniversary, project. She said that the children ended up joining the New York Historical Association.

“In 1963, they sought out and received a charter from the New York State Board of Regents to create the Saratoga County Historical Society, and there was a small museum space in the county Clerk’s building,” she said. “When that was torn down in about 1970, two wonderful donors purchased this building, which had been laying empty for about 10 years and donated it to the organization so that they had a museum space.”

Thus, in 1971, the Brookside Museum moved into its permanent home at 6 Charlton St., Ballston Spa.

The Brookside Museum’s official website states that “In our National Registry 1792 Brookside Museum building we teach more than 4,000 school children each year. Over the past 40 years we have fascinated another 50,000 children and parents with the Sheep to Shawl program. Our collection of 30,000 items covers three centuries of Saratoga County History. The Irena Wooten Research Room holds a unique and unparalleled research library for local history.”

Arthur added that the collection ranges from textiles to toys to farming and cooking implements to old family Bibles. One of the more recent additions is a book of photocards, technically called a “carte de visite,” from the 1880’s, donated by the Booth family in the past year.

Part of the reason for the museum struggling is that according to Arthur, in recent years the county stopped funding non-profits like Brookside. Additionally, the museum’s previous Director left in 2014.

Ronni Reich, Director of Public Information for the New York State Council of the Arts, clarified that the Historical Society, which is technically the same entity as the museum, continued to receive financial support from the Council from 2014 to 2016, and that the Council evaluates applications annually, so the museum can reapply for funding in early 2020.

To aid the museum, the Saratoga County Historical Society and Saratoga County History Roundtable have partnered to launch a “Save Brookside” campaign with the goal of raising $100,000 by March, 2020.

Arthur said that the goal was high enough so that the museum will have enough funds not just to stabilize, but to get over the hump that has plagued them in recent years.

She said that enough funding will allow them to stay open for long enough to formulate a new strategy, as the current one is clearly not working; and also ideally would allow the museum to begin thriving as a hub of the community.

Jim Richmond, Coordinator for the Roundtable, said that the museum and Roundtable have been joined at the hip since the Roundtable first formed in April, 2018, as their monthly meetings take place inside the museum.

In a worst case scenario, where the museum officially closes, Richmond said that the Roundtable would need to find a new place to meet and a home for the group’s programs.

He added that the loss would be more than just a space though, as Brookside and the Roundtable from something greater than the sum of their parts, so the joint organization programs would suffer even more.

Meanwhile, Arthur said that for the museum, closing would mean that the 30,000-item collection would need to go to a publically accessible collection somewhere.

She emphasized that they would not be sold or disappear as that the New York State Board of Regents has strict protocols and regulations in place for such a scenario.

In the meantime, Richmond said that both the museum and Roundtable are contacting their various connections to come up with enough money to support the museum, such as Arthur and the other museum employees contacting local and state government, and the Roundtable contacting its 160 members for donations.

In the intervening weeks since the potential closure was announced, the town of Ballston has pledged $20,000 to support the museum.

According to the official press release, “The Saratoga County Historical Society is now working with stakeholders to address longstanding financial structure issues and create a plan to keep the museum solvent for the foreseeable future. The funds from the Town of Ballston have been taken from the county landfill funds which were given to the Town to use at its discretion.”

Additionally, Richmond said that individual donations through the Roundtable have totaled somewhere between $15,000 and $20,000 as of earlier this week, on Monday, Nov. 4, and Arthur said that the town of Milton will be voting next month on whether or not to follow suit with Ballston and pledge money to aid the museum.

In response, Arthur said “members of the community, especially members of the Saratoga County Roundtable, have stepped up and are working with us to raise funds in order to keep the doors open and also be able to plan for the future. So we’ve had the Roundtable, we’ve had community support, and also municipal support.”

She said that she was grateful for everyone allowing the museum to have its “It’s a Wonderful Life” moment, and that at the absolute least the museum is certain to be open to the end of 2019.

For more information, visit Brookside Museum’s website, at www.brooksidemuseum.org, or email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..