By Karla Browne March 4, 2003

Katherine Beard would be pleased. 

The merger last year of the Louise Beard Memorial and Newport Revitalization Inc. was just the kind of thing she had in mind when she bequeathed her home to the community in 1938.

Left alone with her antiques in the 13-room Victorian home in Newport after the deaths of her husband and only child, Katherine Beard began planning and working to leave a memorial. Named for her daughter, the community center and museum also is a tribute to three generations of Newport history.

Margaret Rupp, Katherine Beard's sister, who did much to make her sister's dream happen, understood the motivation. Rupp, who died some years ago, wrote in an article that's part of the museum collection that her sister couldn't let go of her memories.

The living room of the home on North Second Street was the setting for "brilliant parties," "gracious entertaining," play coaching" and planning by "leading organizations" in the early years of the 20th century.

"A lovely flower garden flourished with rose slips and tulip bulbs representing the nurture of four generations of the family," Rupp wrote. "Springtime found the beds a riot of color, roses bloomed all through the summer months, and the regal lilies and pale blue delphinium made a heavenly picture," she wrote.

In the rooms of the home, "every nook and cranny" held "a tender meaning." Not to mention "valued vases, cherished china, and precious paintings" handed down from Katherine Beard's grandparents and parents and items she collected herself.

So when Katherine Beard's daughter, Louise, died in 1936 at the age of 42, the grieving mother set to work on her collections before dying two years later.

"In her last year she went over every inch of her home, marking and explaining many articles and listing all in notebooks," her sister wrote. Around town the goings on at 129 N. Second St. created "much conjecture as to her plans," Rupp wrote. When Katherine Beard died suddenly in 1938, her will made it all clear.

The Louise Beard Memorial was bequeathed for the "material, moral, intellectual and aesthetic welfare of the community centering in Newport," Rupp quoted from the will. But it was Rupp herself who ensured that the dream came to pass. Rupp referred to herself in her article as Katherine Beard's "nearest relative who was also one of her executors" and the confidante of the idea for a museum.

The sister modestly wrote, "all this has now come to pass," glossing over her tireless efforts in recruiting, organizing and setting up the museum. Rupp credited townspeople with holding benefits, promising to rent the center for meetings and purchasing life memberships. Partitions were torn down in the living area of the home to allow for a large meeting room and the "entire interior refinished," Rupp wrote.

"Then one Sunday afternoon in spring (of 1939) a formal dedication was held, and in spite of a pouring rain there was a capacity audience," she wrote. A November 1939 newspaper article in the museum notes that Perry County Historical Society members arranged Katherine Beard's collections. The more than 600 items were all "arranged in chronological order, properly labeled and catalogued." The museum opened later that month.

Trust became inadequate

Katherine Beard had left a $5,000 trust, the interest from which would pay for upkeep, and a smaller sum for immediate changes and repairs.

"In 1939, that was not so bad," says Jane Wertz, a former member of the Louise Beard Memorial board and now a member of the joint board formed with NRI to become Newport Revitalization and Preservation Society (NRPS).

But by 2002, "we had no way to keep the thing in good shape," Wertz says.

The 114-year-old structure is showing its age despite loving repairs and maintenance made by volunteer Gordon Hoke of Newport and others with the Newport Civic Club and the efforts of caretaker Ruby McCarson and her husband before his death.

The merger solved that problem and a few more. The newly formed organization applied for nonprofit status, qualifying the memorial and museum for state preservation grants. Members of the revitalization group infused Louise Beard Memorial with younger blood. "Some of us are getting too old for this sort of thing and some of them are older than me," Wertz says. And the revitalization group has a home.

NRI co-founder and former President Susan Connell says NRI was able to "expand the historical element of what we were doing." Connell envisions the new organization as a historical society "just for Newport" in addition to the county historical society, which always has supported the museum and memorial.

Ties to county group

Perry County Historical Society held its annual meeting at Louise Beard for years before setting up its own museum around 1980 at Blue Ball Tavern in Little Buffalo State Park. Holding meetings at the Beard Memorial was only fitting, as Katherine Beard was an active member and treasurer of the county historical society.

But Newport people appreciate having a Newport-only repository for artifacts, says NRPS member Shari Mattern, who also was a member of both organizations before they merged. "As older people are leaving us and looking for a place to donate items, people like to keep it in town," Mattern says.

"There's some neat stuff in here," she adds as she leads the way to the museum in an upstairs bedroom.

About the collection

Glass cases, some with glass shelves, line the walls of the approximately 15-by-20-foot room with windows toward the Newport square a block away. "Do you see the waist on this dress?" Mattern says. Tiny-waisted, bustled gowns; high-top buttoned shoes; fans; shawls; and beaded bags share space with daguerreotypes, sepia-toned photographs, scrapbooks and crumbling books.

China, silver, glassware, toys, valentines and postcards vie for space on the crowded shelves with lodge medals, antique Christmas ornaments, newspapers from the 1800s and fliers announcing an appearance of "General Tom Thumb and his beautiful little wife," famous midgets of the last century. "Half the people in town don't know this exists. People should be made aware of this," Mattern adds.

That's the plan as NRPS brings together board members from the memorial and the revitalization group.

Facelift planned

A facelift for the Louise Beard Memorial exterior is one of the first projects. The white siding and railed porch do little to distinguish the structure from neighboring homes and businesses that cluster close to the downtown sidewalks. The memorial has no sign. A small plaque on the side of the house is the only indication of what lies inside.

But the home has some outstanding features. Two staircases lead to the four rooms upstairs that include living quarters for its caretaker. The house "really has a lot of windows for its time," Connell says. "We'd like to bring it back to the Victorian colors - two or three different colors," Connell says.

Photographs in the collection show that the home sported at least one trim color different from the siding color in years past, she says. What the colors were, "nobody can tell," she adds.

Members of the revitalization group have some experience with building facelifts. NRI conducted a facade improvement program for businesses and individuals to redecorate and repair storefronts and replace signs.

A $55,500 budget largely funded by Pennsylvania Power and Light enhanced 23 borough buildings in 1996 through 1998. Another part of the program was repointing brick at borough offices in a former fire station on Market Street.

Previous projects

NRI's projects over the years have included promoting Newport's historic status, saving the borough's historic train station and a downtown building, a river walk study and a streetscape plan. NRI members were involved in the $1.3 million redevelopment of the historic Butz Building on the Newport square by Tri-County Housing Development Corp. Apartments for low income elderly people and headquarters and galleries of Perry County Council of the Arts now occupy the building.

NRI was part of the community's successful effort to place the entire borough of Newport on the National Register of Historic Places. The federal listing provides opportunities for tax credits for participating business owners and landlords in the borough and parts of adjoining Oliver Township.

Connell wrote a grant application to fund a $12,600 feasibility study for creating a river walk - a half-mile trail along the Juniata River from the Route 34 bridge under the railroad tunnel and across Front Street to the community playground.

NRI members also have been behind the borough's streetscape plan, which includes new curbing and paving, installation of old-fashioned street lamps, rerouting electric lines off the square and adding green space.

Hammered out about eight years ago with the help of Tri-County Planning Commission, the plan could cost up to $1.5 million, says Bob Sharar, NRPS president. The project is coordinated with the borough's ongoing sewer/stormwater separation project funded in part by community development block grants and a Pennsylvania Department of Transportation project to resurface Route 34 through the downtown.

NRI also commissioned Newport Middle School students to create a booklet mapping a walking tour of Newport's historic buildings and describing their past. NRI members have worked since 1998 to save the deteriorating railroad station on Market Street near the Juniata River. It's about a century old.

So taking under their wing the 1889 Beard home felt natural to NRI members. The merger with Louise Beard Memorial "has tied together everything NRI has done," Connell says. "It's building on the past."

Katherine Beard would be pleased.