Bethany Beach Mayor Carol Olmstead and Town Manager Cliff Graviet got a sneak preview of a major project to be unveiled in the town hall in the coming weeks.
Don Reckeweg displays a sneak preview of the mural he has created for Bethany Beach Town Hall.Members of the town’s Cultural and Historical Affairs Committee (CHAC), which Olmstead chairs, met with mural creator Don Reckeweg on Jan. 10, and he came armed with a small section of the town historical mural that will eventually be installed in the town museum.
The mural depicts a map of the town’s original streets, surrounded by drawings of some of the first houses built there, all on a simulated parchment background and declaring the town’s date of establishment, in 1901.
The finished 15-by-8-foot mural is set to be installed high on the west wall of the town museum area in the town hall lobby, just inside the entrance to Bethany Beach Town Hall.
Reckeweg brought in a segment of the full-scale mural design Jan. 10 to show the committee members who helped design and commission it for the town, and to view it against the freshly painted parchment-colored walls in the museum.
The section shown Tuesday included the lower-left portion of the design, depicting the shoreline with wavy blue lines, streets in brown, two historic homes in dark blue and text showing both street names and the town’s name and founding date in dark brown or black. Having already seen smaller proofs of the full design, committee members and officials were favorably impressed.
“It’s great,” enthused Graviet. “It will really set that room off.”
Graviet and Reckeweg noted that since that town commissioned the work, it owns the rights to both the finished mural artwork and the component map and house drawings that are included in it. That means the town can now look for other avenues to use the design — and perhaps even to help recoup the cost of the mural with adjunct sales.
Reckeweg said local restaurants might be interested in making placemats with the images, or the town could sell them. Graviet suggested notecards and prints depicting the individual houses that were included on the map. Olmstead said she felt frameable prints of the homes would sell particularly well.
Installation of the mural is likely to be done within the month. Reckeweg was to make arrangements with professional installers for the job and to accompany them to see his work put in its intended place. A formal unveiling of the mural is likely to be scheduled once it is installed.
“That’s Project No. 1 completed,” Olmstead said of the several projects the committee has been working on over the last year or so.
Another of those projects — historical markers for some of the structures shown on the mural, as well as others — is also nearing fruiting for CHAC. Committee members reviewed sample print-outs of the planned bronze markers for eight historical structures on Jan. 10, agreeing to give the go-ahead to the manufacturer to produce them.
Markers for Journey’s End, Addy I, Addy Sea, Dinker Cottage, Dinker House, Errett Cottage, Scott House and Townsend House are among the first group to be produced, at just over $3,200 in cost for the committee and town. They will be dark brown in color, with a “leatherette” texture and glossy finish, and raised lettering in the bronze.
Each marker will be placed near the sidewalk or roadway in front of the related structure, if it still exists, or in the location where it once resided. The marker text will include basic information on the history of the structure, such as previous uses and original locations.
Additional markers may be created for other historical locations or structures, with property owners granting permission for the town to place the markers at those locations.
A third project is also moving forward for CHAC, with the committee ready to send out letters to some of the town’s long-term residents and property owners, asking them to provide stories of the town’s history. It’s a first step in the protracted effort by the committee to create an oral history that would eventually be displayed via a computer kiosk in the town museum.
With progress on the oral portion of the history project still lacking over technical issues, committee members agreed to solicit such written stories in the meantime, planning to display the responses in a physical album in the museum and to eventually follow up on some of them with recording sessions.
Committee member Margaret Young has also been working on a new addition to the museum, funded by a memorial donation made for that purpose. Young said she had initially considered a children’s table, full of items that young visitors to the museum could handle, but had given second thoughts to the idea over the need to staff it and remove it from display when it was not staffed.
Instead, she focused on obtaining a piece or pieces of art that might be displayed on a bit of open wall space in the museum area, considering possibly obtaining a print of local artist Ellen Rice’s new painting of the Addy Sea.
Olmstead said she had visited local artist Laura Hickman with the same idea and had received a donation of two prints of Hickman’s paintings of town alleyways as a result. She had also found a print of a map depicting Delaware and New Jersey shipwrecks as part of her investigations.
Olmstead said she expected the Hickman works and map would be framed and displayed in town hall regardless of what was decided regarding the memorial donation, leaving Young to determine how to use the donation.
Finally, committee members reviewed plans for their upcoming cultural events. The popular series will remain on Wednesday nights for now, moving to a later 7:30 p.m. time, and some speakers and performers are already being scheduled for “next year’s” events, starting in the fall.
The next CHAC meeting was set for Monday, Feb. 12, at 1 p.m.