Artifacts Find Their Place: September 2026

Over the last month, huge changes have taken place on the 4th floor of the Grey Courthouse. After the interior space was built out with new walls, new paint, and leveled floors, acres of brand-new custom shelving units were installed over several weeks. Preparing to welcome our valuable artifacts, this is no ordinary shelving!

After two full days of moving (August 1 and August 29), about 3/4 of Montgomery History’s artifact collections were installed in the new space. A third move day in September will hopefully finish the job of transferring; however, the work to inventory the items, update locations in the collections database, and check for condition on all 10,000 objects is just beginning!

Clean, crisp and fully adjustable shelving installed by SpaceSaver, Inc., ready for textile boxes and small desktop pieces like lamps, vases, and clocks.

The open footprint of the 4th floor space provides long aisles

Custom features like this soon-to-be quilt rack help support the storage and preservation of our most treasured pieces.

Two spacious workstations with ample storage were installed to provide collections volunteers and interns a place to spread out.

Now all our portraits and other works of art can hang safely on rolling art racks that are space-efficient and ideal for preservation.

Textile boxes (on the right) fitted to their new homes, along with hat boxes (far shelf) and hanging textiles on the left

Wide-span shelving at differing heights offers ample space for our furniture pieces, and other large artifacts in the west wing of the space. Even in this limited-view picture you can get a sense of the range of our collections: chairs, chests, buggies, sleds, dollhouses, and a giant iron cooking vessel.

Our curator, Sammie Hatton, is thrilled to have a clean, safe, spacious environment in which to care for our valuable collections.

We hope you’ve enjoyed these behind-the-scenes photos of our new collections storage at the Grey Courthouse! If you have any questions, or want to learn about naming opportunities, please contact Director of Development Brenna Ryan at BRyan@MontgomeryHistory.org.