Community Corner

Shoreline Historical Museum Celebrates New Home

Grand opening showcases recast exhibits in new space at Linden Ave. N. while signaling a post-Ronald School era

History is often about change, and sometimes things come full circle.

Karen Choyce’s mother Betty Jones Choyce started her teaching career in 1954 at the old Ronald School, the site of the Shoreline Historical Museum for 35 years.

Karen Choyce liked to return to her mother’s former place of work and see the exhibits at the museum to remember and honor her mother.

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While attending the Shoreline Historical Museum’s grand opening for its new location on the corner of Linden Ave. N. and 185th St. in Shoreline Saturday, Oct. 8, Choyce ran into one of her mother’s former fourth-grade students Judy Wedding. She took a picture of Wedding holding a picture of her mother next to the Ronald School exhibit at the new museum. 

Choyce, an Eastside resident, like many Shoreline residents who have connections to the school, is disappointed that the Ronald School is no longer the museum’s home but she’s glad to see it again open and thriving in a new location.

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Since the mid-1970s the museum called the historic Ronald School home on the campus of Shorewood High School.

That was until earlier this year when the museum moved out for good after the Shoreline School District purchased the Ronald School for $850,000 to make way for the construction of the new Shorewood High School, which will incorporate it into the new building.

After nearly three years marked by controversy, legal wrangling, and frustration felt by the museum board with the Shoreline School District, a complex real estate transaction emerged and the museum has a new home.

“We’re really happy at this location,” museum director Vicki Stiles said. “It’s a great location.”

“Through the hard work and negotiations of everybody involved, it all came out O.K.,” she said. “That’s really true people put many hours in talking and working it out.”

The exhibits are housed in what was once the James Alan Salon. A deal was worked out with the help of the museum’s lawyer Joel Gordon, of Gordon Derr in Seattle, to purchase the property from a partnership that included James Alan owner Matthew Fairfax, Shoreline mayor Keith McGlashan and Jim Abbott.

4Culture, the King County arts grant arm, provided $125,000 that was used to acquire the museum. Blue Canyon Construction of Lake City

The site is six-tenths of an acre and the museum plans to add two more conjoined buildings, behind the current museum office building, north of the main museum, Stiles said.

The new buildings will be done in two phases with phase one going in directly behind the museum office. The additional buildings will be used for more exhibits, meeting rooms and collection storage.

Helen Oltman, 85, who has volunteered for the museum for 19 years and helped create the new exhibits, attended the Ronald School, with friends Mary Loggerquist and Jean Wren, who also came to the grand opening.

“We all went to Ronald School from first to eighth grade,” she said.

As far as which exhibits are her favorite, she said, “I like them all.”


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