The Vandergrift Museum, located at 184 Sherman Avenue in Vandergrift, has been a work in progress for nearly two decades now. It may always be a work in progress, due to efforts of its director, Beth Caporali, and all the volunteers that have poured hours of labor into the project—I doubt they will ever give up extending the museum’s artifacts. But the museum has come a long way since its humble beginnings in a closet in the Casino.

From the beginning Beth and others carefully archived—while wearing white gloves—everything in special plastic in her small closet-sized area in Vandergrift’s Casino Theatre. Then a few years ago the Victorian Vandergrift Museum and Historic Society bought the old Sherman Elementary School building and turned it into a panoramic extensive display of Vandergrift’s history. As if by magic, the old classrooms have been transmogrified into a series of scenes, each offering tidbits of life in the early 1900s in general and in early Vandergrift in particular.

The scenes vary. You’ll see an authentic doctor’s office, an early radio shop—with actual radios from a Vandergrift shop when radios were brand new, and even an early kitchen. A wagon used to move steel slab samples lurks nearby, complete with the huge 20lb tongs used by workers to pick up the steel. Original pennants from the old Vandergrift High School (Kiski Area’s predecessor) hang on a wall. And there is a nice glimpse of the day when Suzy Homemaker sewed her own clothes, cooked on a scary-looking stove and washed clothes in a strange-looking machine.

There is more: authentic clothing, 70-year old newspapers, Vandergrift’s World’s Fair Medals, a model of Vandergrift, a genealogy library where you can research your family tree. It’s all courtesy of 15-plus volunteers, (including President Anthony Ferrante, Vice-President Norm Myers, Treasurer Bill Hesketh, Secretary Ellie Shaw, Mary Jane Slicker, Ruth Hesketh, Dennis Hall, Mickey Thomas, Carol Waugaman, Cora Lee Cole, Lu Gill, Rick and Tim Iverson, Don Kaufman, and Mark Fairman) who remodel, set up displays, give tours, and help research.

The Vandergrift Museum offers a great look into a period of time that is gone now, and would certainly seem alien to anyone born in this age of mp3 players, computers, microwaves and Internet. See it for yourself, 10am-3pm, Monday thru Saturday and also by appointment. Check out their website, www.vvmhs.com , and be sure to see their online shop. You can even buy hats, afghans, mugs, and even a Vandergrift history book there.

The Victorian Vandergrift Museum and Historic Society bought the old Sherman Elementary School building and turned it into a panoramic extensive display of Vandergrift’s history

As if by magic, the old classrooms have been transmogrified into a series of scenes...this is an early radio shop—with actual radios from a Vandergrift shop when radios were brand new...

when Suzy Homemaker washed clothes in a strange-looking machine...

Part of the museum staff, Mary Jane Slicker & Ruth Hesketh are hard at work in the collections area, archiving & preparing artifacts for display

A newspaper from the great flood of '36, on display at the Vandergrift Museum

Original pennants from the old Vandergrift High School (Kiski Area’s predecessor)

wagon used to move steel slab samples lurks nearby, complete with the huge 20lb tongs used by workers to pick up the steel

Museum staffer Dennis Hall researches in the Genealogical library

an authentic doctor’s office, complete with its own nurse who was kind enough to stand still for the display, a really, really, REALLy long time

Suzy Homemaker cooked on a scary-looking stove...why doesn't the microwave have a glass door? and wasn't this on a Green Acres once?

Mrs. Homemaker used foot-power to make her sewing machine work

A Victorian Vandergrift parlor room

One of the exhibits includes a 3-D map of Vandergrift...

...a close-up of the 3-D Vandergrift replica, looking across the Kiski River by the Vandergrift Bridge from North Vandergrift

Music from Vandergrift's early days