AURORA —A 100-year-old trolley trailer that is the centerpiece of a new permanent exhibit at the Aurora History Museum has been installed in a brand new gallery after years of restoration.
The installation happened more than eight years after Trolley Trailer No. 610 was in east Aurora in 2006. The trolley went through three years of volunteer restoration and then sat in storage until the museum expansion was nearly complete.
Jennifer Kuehner, executive director of the Aurora History Museum, said there are still another two months of construction and preparation before the public can start visiting the trolley.
“After construction is done, we’ll do the interior remodeling of the two exhibit galleries and then we’ll install the exhibit that is going in around the trolley,” Kuehner said. “We couldn’t finish construction until the trolley (was) in there.”
The new gallery design features a south-facing glass wall that looks out onto the Great Lawn at Aurora Municipal Center. The 10-foot-tall, 18,000 pound trolley was lifted from a flatbed truck and carefully maneuvered onto original trolley tracks and moved into the new wing.
Construction crews had to hold off on installing the giant glass wall until the trolley was rolled into the building.
Ryan Wallace, associate principal at Humphries Poli Architects in Denver, said the entire museum expansion, which includes the 1,600-square-foot exhibition room, a new entrance and exhibition hall and a 900-square-foot receiving room, will be finished at the end of October.
The $1.4 million project, called the Ruth Fountain Addition, was funded by the city and some donations. .
Fountain, 86, is a former city councilwoman who, along with her late husband, Bob Eide, spearheaded the restoration of No. 610. Fountain also sits on the board of the Aurora Museum Foundation and helped raise around $75,000 for restoration costs.
“It’s unfortunate that Bob’s life didn’t last long enough for him to see it to this point,” Fountain said. “He knew it was going to deteriorate if something wasn’t done, so he took it on himself and got some friends to help.”
Cliff Lushbough and Morey Miller are longtime residents of Aurora, and friends of Fountain, who led the restoration efforts from 2007-10. A total of 4,500 labor hours went into the project.
“It’s kind of a dream come true after I’ve spent so much time with it,” Lushbough, said. “We had a great group of people who stuck with it for years.”
He said a final coat of paint, some cabinet installations and wood trimming are all that’s left to do. The museum will also install a wheelchair lift and platform that runs along the outside of the trolley so that people with limited mobility can still get up and see inside the trolley, which will be open for guests to sit in.
According to Kuehner, Trolley Trailer No. 610 was constructed by the Woeber Company for the Denver City Tramway Company in 1913. She said it likely ran up and down Colfax Avenue from 1914 to 1932. It was found in the home of Edwin Perrott, a local man who bought the trolley in 1950 for $50 and turned it into his bedroom. Perrott’s son, William Perrott, donated No. 610 to Aurora after it was discovered.
The trolley will be the center of the new, permanent exhibit on Aurora’s 123-year history, called “Growing Home.” It is slated to open at the end of November.
“Growing Home” will be split into thematic segments, such as transportation, where the trolley fits in.
“Each of those sections will have related objects, historic pictures and then one or two interactive parts,” Kuehner said. “We spent about a year redesigning the entire exhibit, and 123 years is hard to convey in the space we have, but we’re going to try and cover as much as we can.”
