HISTORY OF THE SCHWENKFELDER LIBRARY AND HERITAGE CENTER

• Early Years 1880-1890
• H.W. and O.S. Kriebel
• The Years Abroad
• Corpus Project
• Finding a Permanent Home
• Directors
• 2001-Present

2001 to Present:

The Heritage Center today

In the 1990s a fire badly damaged Kriebel Hall, the main building of the Perkiomen School. This prompted the Board to consider, relocating the museum collection to a more secure, fireproof building. A capital campaign was started to raise money for an addition to the library for storage and exhibition of the museum collection.

Ground was broken in March of 2000 and the building was completed and rededicated in June 2001. During the period of the construction the building was closed but the staff continued to work in the midst of the construction. The museum collection was inventoried and boxed for moving and the library collection was boxed and stored off site. Since 2001 the, rechristened, “Schwenkfelder Library & Heritage Center” has opened its doors to researchers, students and families interested in the Schwenkfelder story or, more generally, Pennsylvania German culture and life. The Heritage Center’s challenges for the future are still great: attracting visitors from a changing social demographic; creating new education and exhibit topics and programs; cataloging its large collection of books manuscripts and artifacts; locating funding for the operation and upkeep of the building and the preservation and conservation of the collection.

Hunt Schenkel, Archivist