To the editor:

The Bristol Historical & Preservation Society, housed since 1957 in the Old Bristol County Jail, has a long record of working to preserve our civic and cultural memory. We are celebrating 90 years of sharing stories about the people who lived here.

Looking forward to our next 90 years, we find it’s time to “break out of jail”. But we don’t want to run too far – just down the street a bit. Come June, 2027, 10 Court Street will become vacant when Town Hall moves to the Guiteras School. We would like to express our interest in acquiring the Town Hall building to create a Bristol history “campus.”
Adjacent to our own building,

10 Court St. allows us to expand our operations in ways that would be highly advantageous to the Bristol community. In its current form, 10 Court St. offers us a dedicated space for our existing programming (lectures, walking tours, show-and-tells), the ability to expand our offerings (how-to construction workshops, re-enactment performances), and more climate-controlled collections space, which is desperately needed.

48 Court Street, our current headquarters, is a fascinating county jail. But it was never designed to store treasures and archives. The jail cells are interesting – but they do not work well as classrooms or research pods. We would like better housing for compelling exhibits on Bristol’s immigration, military veterans, and manufacturing history, and more flexible space in which to talk about the stories of our indigenous roots and the Transatlantic Slave Trade.

Linking the two buildings together makes the space in between come alive with intriguing possibilities, such as room for a Visitor’s Center as well as a beautiful, modern, and accessible exhibit space. The campus would create a valuable asset for the town - a place to gather, a place to collaborate, and a place to learn. As American historian David McCullough once said “History is who we are - and why we are the way we are.”

Expanding our footprint into a Bristol History Center allows us to not only protect our valuable collection, but see to it that treasures are viewed by and shared with the public. It also allows us to accept and steward artifacts that might otherwise disappear from the record and offers an opportunity to share square footage with organizations that share our passion. Furthermore, the expansion would draw visitors well beyond Bristol's borders to explore our region's varied and intriguing past.

As we envision it, the Bristol History Center would be a vibrant, exciting, interactive experience that ensures that our town’s history and memories are collected and preserved. We know that many in our community share our vision and so we ask that you join us by supporting this expansion plan to ensure that future Bristolians will experience the deep, rich, and complicated history of this town we call home.

Catherine W. Zipf, Executive Director
On behalf of the The Board of Trustees, Bristol Historical & Preservation Society