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SOHO Museum News, October 2015
Update on the Whaley House
By Dean Glass, Whaley House historian and curatorial team member
 If you haven't visited the Whaley House Museum lately, you are in for a treat. Upstairs, downstairs and in the Whaley & Crosthwaite General Store, SOHO's curatorial team has been working on the building and its collections.
Several authentic Whaley Family pieces, donated to the museum by Thomas and Anna Whaley's great-great grandson Frederick Reynolds Gerlach, are back at home. Mr. Whaley's walnut marble-top table now stands in the study and three of Mrs. Whaley's well-traveled steamer trunks can be found upstairs. Reproductions of rare never before seen photos of family and friends from the Whaley albums now decorate the parlor, study and master bedroom.
Period prints and lithographs appropriate to the museum, now grace the walls and add to the period art already in place. We also added a large 1860s shadow-boxed hair wreath, donated by longtime SOHO member and past board member Jim Schibanoff. Hair wreaths were very popular in the Victorian age, used most often as a memorial tribute to a friend or relative before photographs were widely available.
The Whaley & Crosthwaite General Store was freshly painted and prepared for faux graining to imitate oak, as was the original. This work included more than 30 feet of wall-mounted electrical power strips, installed during the 1960s, to be removed. During the 1960s era, the adjacent pantry had also been turned into a cleaning closet; this has been painted and prepped for graining too, and a new display will be installed in early 2016.
Remember, your SOHO membership includes free admission to the Whaley House Museum before 5pm, so be sure to come by and see what's new at this old house.
Above left to right Whaley House curatorial team members Dean Glass and Christopher Pro
examine an old Saratoga trunk that once belonged to Anna Whaley.
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