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Chicago Tribune
November 6, 1994 ELGIN'S ATTIC THE TWO-HEADED CALF AND MUMMIES ARE GONE, BUT MUSEUM STILL HOLDS TREASURES IN ITS BACK ROOMS Author: Paula Lauer. Special to the Tribune. Edition: NORTHWEST FINAL Section: TEMPO NORTHWEST Page: 1 Index Terms: SUBURB HISTORY INTERVIEW PROFILE Estimated printed pages: 7 Article Text: Baby pharaoh mummies, monkeys swinging from the rafters, a two-headed calf and a mysterious visit from convicted kidnapper-murderer Nathan F. Leopold Jr. Those are just a few of the legends floating around the 90-year-old Elgin Public Museum. For despite its status as one of five natural history museums in the state, the institution, like most small community museums, has been what museum director Nancy Epping calls "a community attic" for almost 60 years. Everything from World War II explosives to vintage clothing to fire engine parts has been stashed in the old building's basement "This used to be the catch-all museum," said museum coordinator Lisa Wisniewski. "It used to be the only museum in town, so we had local history, we had freak animals, we had . . . those little shoes that Chinese women wore (after having their feet bound in infancy), we had baby mummies. "When it was the Elgin Audubon Museum (from 1920 to 1964), they collected birds, but they collected everything else, too, so it was, `Come to Elgin and see the two-headed calf and the baby pharaoh mummies.' " The museum has only about 3,000 square feet of display space, so the 20,000 annual visitors see only a fraction of the estimated 15,000 objects in the collection-about 2 or 3 percent if you count all the insects, eggs, projectile points and sea shells, Epping said. Exhibits are changed every year or two, while bird mounts are rotated every 18 months or so. The rest of the items land in the museum's windowless store room, which is strictly off limits to anyone but the four full-time staff members. The dimly lit room is a repository for a carefully organized hodgepodge of stuff, each item with its own assigned location and code number. But there are some things you won't be able to find, including the two-headed calf, which was born on an Elgin farm, and such imposters as a one-eyed cat and a five-legged deer that the Elgin Audubon Society had created. "Early on, museums were judged by the size of their collections," Wisniewski said, "and the coolest museum used to be the one that had the most stuff on display, even if it was made up, like a five-legged deer." Motley from age and insect infestation, the two-headed calf and imposter freaks were disposed of in the early 1980s, Wisniewski said, and the mummies were donated to the Oriental Institute of Chicago (X-rays revealed they weren't human remains, but were mummified ibises). People still come in and ask about them, usually with expectant children or grandchildren in tow. "We're going to get T-shirts for the staff that say, `No, it's not here anymore,"' Wisniewski said, laughing. "People still bring their kids to see the two-headed calf and the little shoes that make your feet curl up, and they get kind of upset when they find out they're not here anymore." But there's a lot that still is, and much of the collection attests to the interesting past of the Elgin museum. Established in 1904 and housed in a partially completed structure built in 1907, the lopsided neo-classical building was a dream that faded when its creator, natural history collector George P. Lord, died in 1906. Originally intended as a gift to the city, it was used for hay storage in 1909, as the city dog pound in 1911 and then reportedly to house monkeys and other animals over the winter from the adjacent zoo ("I've heard stories from older residents that seeing the monkeys swing from the animal mounts was pretty impressive," Wisniewski said). Finally, it was turned over to the Elgin Audubon Society to showcase its ornithological specimens, among other things. After the Elgin Audubon Society disbanded, the building and the collections fell to the city of Elgin in 1964. The museum slid into disrepair in the 1970s, and it wasn't until 1983 that residents formed a museum advisory committee. That group, Elgin Public Museum Inc., hired Epping to become museum director and give the place some direction. Thanks to Epping's leadership, "they're very well known in museum circles for their professional standards," said Karen Goering, council member and long-range planing chairwoman of the St. Louis-based Midwest Museum Conference. "I think that under Nancy's leadership the museum has become a dynamic force within the Elgin community." Nowadays, generous donors bearing political button collections, Victorian wedding dresses or war memorabilia are sent with a friendly wave to the appropriate historical society. Unfortunate freaks of nature, implements of torture or other objects not falling under the museum's collection policy, including but not limited to road kill and childhood rock collections, are gently turned away. According to Epping, the museum's collection policy helps determine what it will and won't accept. Under the umbrella of natural history and anthropology, priority goes to objects pertaining to Elgin, Illinois or the Midwest (in that order), or that can be interpreted through special exhibitions such as the museum's annual Touching on Traditions exhibit or multicultural programs. The museum also collects historic material relating to Lords Park or the museum. Once the museum has accepted an item, getting rid of it is not an easy task. The museum must document the reason for removal of an item, and then describe how its going to do it. "It's normally a 90-day procedure," she said. "But if it's injurious to the rest of the collection (an insect infestation in a bird mount, for example) or human life (say, live grenades), we can remove them immediately and report to the board later." In some cases, removing is more trouble and expense than it's worth. For example, resting in an out-of-the-way corner of the museum's lab and wrapped in garbage bags are two large mounts that are too expensive to dispose of. One is a poorly proportioned mountain lion, and the other is a big horned sheep. Both were part of Lord's original collection and are preserved with arsenic, an insecticide used in taxidermy until 1958. The cost of sealing and landfilling these animals would be more than $500 each, Wisniewski said. So, for now anyway, they'll remain in storage. "As far as biological things go, you can't just throw away an eagle," she said, "and you certainly can't sell it (it's against the law). So we usually end up just keeping things until they're totally gone. If it's a newer mount and we know how it was (stuffed), we'll rip it apart and salvage what we can, whether it's feathers, wings . . . and Mary (Hill, the museum's education coordinator) gets it. But they last a long time; I can't think of aything that we've had to dispose of that wasn't able to go to Mary." While most of the objects not falling under the collection policy have been removed, that's not to say the variety of objects stored in the museum basement are any less interesting. In the storeroom, floor to ceiling shelves, each one with a location code, are filled with birds-600 at last count-displaying a variety of avian attitudes. Some, like the quizzical-looking pelican or the indifferent loon, are resting peacefully, while others portray the aerodynamics of bird life-an owl taking off, a songbird landing, or a hummingbird mid-hover. Still others, like the "Shrike With Kill," were seemingly captured in the middle of dinner. Carefully packed away in metal cabinets are still more birds, most of them tiny songbirds or smaller birds of prey. Despite their unnatural setting and close proximity to one another, they all look disturbingly lifelike. "We've got everything," Wisniewski said of the collection. "Just about every kind of duck there is, pelicans, eagles, condors, hummingbirds, songbirds. . . . And chances are if we don't have the bird, we've probably got its egg." To the left are similar metal shelves that provide resting places for native mammals such as squirrels, chipmunks, moles, muskrats, foxes and a cougar. There are other unusual items such as a leopard skin donated by a big-game hunter, Native American pots and a whole buffalo calf. Because the museum was acquiring objects under no real organizational structure for so long, Wisniewski estimates about 40 percent of the collection has holes in its history. "The problem with our museum is that the first person to ever run it like a museum with records was Nancy," she said. "So (for) a lot of stuff, we don't know what it is or where it came from. A lot of the (information) we have is hearsay, or handwritten notes left by someone who died 50 years ago. A couple of years ago, somebody donated a bunch of old newspaper clippings, typed notes and photos, so we're still going through that and getting information." One of the semi-confirmable stories involves the remains of a prehistoric Irish deer head, complete with a 10-foot rack of antlers, brought over by a priest from Ireland who ran out of money and ended up pawning his treasure in Colorado Springs. Lord bought it, along with the story, from the pawn shop in 1898 and had an elk hide glued to the bones. Today the head shares a wall in the museum's main hall with a buffalo and a moose donated in the 1950s. There are also Lords Park zoo animals-Tillie the black bear and Murphy the skunk among them-and a striking collection of bird mounts donated by the infamous Nathan F. Leopold Jr. The Chicagoan, along with his partner Richard Loeb, was sentenced to life plus 99 years for the kidnapping and murder of Loeb's 14-year-old cousin, Bobbie Franks, in 1924. Leopold was an expert ornithologist and hired one of Chicago's best taxidermists, Karl W. Kahmann, to mount his bird specimens. It's unclear whether he decided to give up his birds before or after the murder, but he chose Elgin as their new home. "He figured, and he was probably right, that if he gave (the collection) to the Field Museum, it would go in a storage room and it would never be seen, so he gave it to the Elgin Audubon Museum," Wisniewski said. "We still have quite a few of them, and they're some of the best birds that we have in the collection." Leopold was paroled in 1958 and, according to a handwritten note on a tattered piece of cardboard, he visited the museum in 1967 before moving to Puerto Rico, where he died of heart failure in 1971. "It's not something we talk about a lot, because he was a murderer," Wisniewski said, "but it is kind of interesting." In contrast to the museum's older files (or lack thereof), the newer record keeping includes files on acid-free paper and a computer inventory that enables museum staff to look up an object's exact location. The records also may have cross-referenced archival information, donation forms, sales slips, records of legal title and license tags as well as notes containing interesting tidbits about the object. "We know exactly what's coming in, we know everything that was acquired since 1983, and we know exactly where it came from," Wisniewski said. If the object is no longer at the museum, a red X is marked on the file. "Museums were created to preserve this natural history for future generations," Wisniewski said, hefting a fist-sized rock. "Right now this rock is occupying a time and space, but it won't always. The best thing we can do, since it won't be there forever, is document as best we can what time and space it filled. Even when these things are gone, in theory, although it doesn't quite work here because we have so much stuff we don't know where it came from, but in theory, people can go and see Caption: PHOTO (color): Lisa Wisniewski, Elgin Public Museum coordinator, works among the carefully organized and coded holdings in storage. PHOTO (color): A carved emu egg from the Victorian era is among the museum's treasures. PHOTO: The Elgin Public Museum is housed in a lopsided neo-classical structure built in 1907. For a time, it was used for hay storage and as the city dog pound. PHOTO: In the storeroom, shelves are filled with birds-600 at last count. ``We've got everything,'' said museum coordinator Lisa Wisniewski. Tribune photos by Chuck Berman PHOTOS 4 Copyright 1994, Chicago Tribune Record Number: CTR9411060413 |
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