Chapter 12: Contributing to a Renaissance in Winchester
Chapter 12: Contributing to a Renaissance in Winchester
The next four chapters of A Bicentennial Crossroads describe how the Crossroads: Change in Rural America host organizations’ implementation of their activities illustrated and responded to dynamics within their communities and to ongoing change in rural Illinois.
The opening of the Old School Museum in 2010 coincided with and contributed to the beginning of a trend toward economic and cultural revitalization in downtown Winchester (population 1,600). The museum’s hosting of Crossroads: Change in Rural America furthered its participation in that renaissance.[1]
The school that previously occupied the building in which the museum is housed moved to another location in 1958. Afterward, the building was used for various purposes, including furniture storage and apartment housing. When Tricia Demby Wallace and her husband, Andy, purchased it with the goal of establishing a museum, it had been mostly vacant for several years. To say that it required extensive cleaning, repair, and renovation before it could welcome the public would be an understatement, as evinced by before-and-after photographs available for viewing on the history page of the museum’s website. With help from area residents, including Wallace’s cousin, Janis Dappert, and several other members of her family, they managed to transform the edifice into a museum of local history and culture around the same time that interest in reinvigorating the town square and adjacent areas in Winchester began to grow.[2]
Wallace noted that when the Old School Museum opened its doors, many of the storefront buildings downtown were unoccupied. Since then, however, “I’ve seen a really, really remarkable increase in people taking over those old buildings, putting little stores in them,” she said. “The last two mayors have had a lot to do with that—really trying to get people interested in bringing businesses back to the square.”
Although Wallace grew up in New York and New Jersey (and still makes her primary residence in the Northeast), she and her family regularly made extended visits to Winchester, where her mother was raised. “I remember as a little girl, walking or driving uptown with my mom. There were two grocery stores, there was the movie theater, there were shoe stores, clothing stores—you know, there was a lot to do. If you went uptown, you spent the afternoon, and you went from store to store. And without that, people just kind of run in the bank, and they go home. But I think it’s starting to turn around. The drugstore’s up on the square again and the little grocery store,” she commented.[3]
The grocery store to which she referred, the Great Scott! Community Market, is owned by a local cooperative, and much of its merchandise is locally grown. It has generated considerable interest throughout the region and beyond since opening in 2018. Scott County residents no longer have to drive to Jacksonville or Pittsfield to buy groceries. (That res