Thanks to Harry and Carol Windland, the Edwardsville Children’s Museum is taking a major step forward in its plans for the Nickel Plate Station.
On Jan. 24, the museum held a ribbon cutting ceremony for the grand opening of the Windland Education Center at Nickel Plate Station.
The facility, which will promote education for children and adults in the Edwardsville area, was funded by a $50,000 donation from the Windlands, the largest in ECM history.
“The Windlands continue to be willing to support Edwardsville,” ECM Director Kristen Fries said. “Thanks to their generosity, they are creating these wonderful spaces that people in our community enjoy.”
The creation of the Windland Education Center had its roots in the form of previous ECM projects.
“In early 2021, when we were starting the Microforest, Harry Windland read about that project in the newspaper,” Fries said. “He contacted us and wanted to be a sustainability sponsor, and he donated $1,000 to that project.
“We were so excited about his donation, and we invited him out to tour the forest. He and Carol have a lot of trees on their property, and they were interested in any kind of environmental projects. He helped a lot with the Microforest and he would come out and volunteer and provide advice and updates.”
When the new Treehouse exhibit was being installed at the Children’s Museum, the Windlands sponsored it, and their name is on that exhibit as well.
“We did all of that construction for the Treehouse, and it’s now open again, and the kids love it,” Fries said. “The Windlands were involved with that, and the Nickel Plate Station is an interesting addition for the museum because it’s a very exciting space for us with two open rooms.
“Our idea is to have different exhibits rotate through that, allowing us to change things up. Space is the biggest limitation we’re up against and we try to maximize every square inch of space in the museum building.”
One of the first new exhibits at Nickel Plate Station was a wooden railway, set up and donated by Tom Stephenson, an engineer for Boeing in Seattle, in March of 2022.
“We have the Arctic exhibit there now and it’s the second year for that,” Fries said. “We’re hoping that this sponsorship (from the Windlands) will allow us to continue to develop new traveling exhibits. We also use that space for other programs and events and lot of our summer camps are offered there as well.”
Fries noted that the donation from the Windlands allows the museum to plan and partner with exhibit builders, architecture firms and design firms about what its next steps will be for the Nickel Plate Station, and it can raise funds accordingly.
“We never had that ability before because we were always waiting to get a donation and then start on a plan,” Fries said. “When the Windlands gave us this donation, we started working on our new exhibit for the Nickel Plate Station, which talks about the passengers that traveled through the station.
“We’re going to have panels on the wall with a phone attached and you can lift the phone to hear the story of passengers who used the station to go to the (1904) World’s Fair in St. Louis or attended the Leclaire School House (now the site of the museum).”
Fries found an exhibit builder from the Science Center in St. Louis, and they collaborated with historians to do research for the exhibit.
“The donation funded that and then we applied for a grant from the Edwardsville Community Foundation,” Fries said. “We received the grant, and we reimbursed the Windland fund. What’s wonderful about that is that we can do it again.
“You can’t apply for a grant if you don’t have a plan about what you’re trying to do. We kept running into situations where we didn’t have the ideas fleshed out enough to win a grant. Now that has changed because of the Windlands’ generosity.”
For information about Edwardsville Children’s Museum, call 618-692-2094, visit https://edwcm.org/ or go to Edwardsville Children’s Museum on Facebook.
