Blame board for Liberty Bell Museum’s troubles
The Liberty Bell Museum has been a staple in our community for 60 years.
As a former executive director, it brought me joy to see the children of Allentown School District come to the museum each year to learn about their local history and how people in the past worked together to save one of the nation’s most important symbols of freedom. As a new teacher in Allentown School District, I looked forward to taking my third grade class to learn about the history.
I am proud of having initiated the third grade program for the Allentown School District students to visit the museum. Now that experience for our city’s children is in jeopardy, but not because of the new owners of the building.
The leadership of the museum board caused so much turmoil through the lease negotiations that I resigned from the board when it failed to approve the lease to keep them in the space.
The board voted no because it did not like having a lease that required it to pay for a space it occupies. An organization must pay rent or operating costs to be a viable organization.
The museum indeed had a lease with Zion’s Reformed United Church of Christ for $1 a year, and the new lease would have increased that amount to $1,000 a month. However, the original lease was for the lower bell room only.
The museum has occupied more than that space for years at no cost because Zion’s has been subsidizing it for 60 years. It used storage space and a hallway on the lower level, an office on the main floor and an archive room on the second floor.
One nonprofit cannot subsidize another nonprofit, as was the case for Zion’s and the museum. Zion’s was paying over $60,000 yearly to keep the building operational so the museum could exist. Church membership had been declining for years. The church should have closed years ago but stayed open, and the museum continued to operate through its subsidy.
When Zion’s consistory began to discuss selling the building, it first offered the building to the museum for $1. Board leadership turned the offer down because the museum could not afford to take on the $60,000 or more yearly operating costs on top of the deferred maintenance costs, including a failing back roof on the back of the building.
Zion’s church then made the same offer to Resurrected
Life Community Church, and it accepted the offer. After the church was offered to Resurrected Life, Zion’s again offered to help the museum by negotiating a lease on its behalf. The museum turned down this offer and went about the negotiations independently.
As chair of the transition task force, we worked with Resurrected Life on a fair lease that gave the museum three years of extremely subsidized rent, so it had time to create a business plan and become a viable organization. However, board members dismantled the task force when they put negotiations into the hands of board leadership.
These negotiations repeatedly failed because a large portion of the museum board could not move beyond the past and look to the future for innovative ways to boost the museum’s status in the community, which brings about new grant opportunities and sponsorships.
When it was announced that Resurrected Life would purchase the building, the church said from the beginning that it wanted to work with the museum to tell the story of freedom and liberty in the community. It was looking forward to having members from its church join the museum board to help build that partnership and a business plan for the museum. They were ready to walk hand in hand with the museum because they recognized the importance of the space and the importance of history in the building.
However, the museum board was not ready to take that walk. I do not doubt that the museum will still be in that space even if the museum board moves objects out of the space. Resurrected Life will tell the whole story of liberty and freedom in Allentown and the Lehigh Valley.
The community wants the museum to stay in that space, so I would hope that the Pennsylvania Historic Museum Commission (which owns the replica bell) would stop the board from moving the bell to another space.
They should allow it to stay in the historic building so that generations to come are able to hear the story and see the history that happened right here in Allentown. The importance of the museum is not based on the board members governing it. It is about the significance of the events that took place in Zion’s church.