After years of planning, the Lowell Smith Sr. History Center is on track to open early next year.

Cleburne City Council members recently voted to hire Nedderman & Associates General Contractors, a Dallas company, to rehabilitate the 1914 structure, which previously housed a grocer and an auto dealer.

Council members will vote on a guaranteed maximum price to be presented by Nedderman officials at an upcoming council meeting.

Should the council approve Nedderman’s price, work on the Smith Center should begin in August and complete about six months later, said Julie Baker, Layland Museum director.

The Smith Center, along with the adjacent Layland Museum, will complement one another, forming a museum complex.

A renovation of the Layland is also planned, pending council approval.

The estimated cost of both projects totals about $3.9 million.

Council members have budgeted $1.5 million toward the projects.

Julie Roberts, project chair of the Smith History Center Project, continues to seek donations and grants for the remainder.

“I’m so happy to have worked on this project,” Roberts said. “Everyone involved worked really well as a team to bring this to fruition. I’ve learned so much about the history of the [Smith] building and Cleburne through the research I’ve had to do.”

The Smith Center will include a classroom, a teaching kitchen, a research library and a collection storage area, said Ben Hammons, curator of collections.

The climate-controlled artifact storage area will house Layland exhibits not presently on display or, in some cases, too fragile to display, Hammons said.

Those items are presently stored at off-site locations, officials said.

“I’m thrilled that we’re going to be able to store and care for these items in the way that they need to be, and that will ensure they are here for generations to come,” Hammons said. “This is a unique project for Cleburne. Many larger museums don’t have a facility like this.”



A new use for an original

“We’re doing a rehabilitation, not a restoration,” Hammons said. “That is, we’re adapting the building to what we need it for today. We’re saving four walls basically, trying to make the outside as close to the original as possible and some of the inside. But most of the interior will be all new, state of the art.”

Researching the building’s exterior proved daunting thanks to scant information and few photos.

“The research has been tough,” Hammons said. “We have yet to find a good, complete picture of the front [Main Street] side of the building. And our goal is to return the building to as close to the original facade as when it was built as possible.”

A 1920s aerial photograph shows the building’s south side, which is partially blocked by one of the plane’s struts.

“If they’d just waited another half second to take the picture,” Hammons said.



Preparing

Nedderman workers began prep work on the building about two weeks ago to gain a better picture of the project and uncover any hidden surprises before construction begins in earnest.

Employees spent several days carefully removing the building’s original tin ceiling tiles.

“They’re using a lot of care removing them because we want to save as many as possible,” Hammons said. “We’re going to clean up and reuse as many as we can, but some are too beat up or rusted with water damage. We should be able to save 70 to 80 percent of them though.”

Thanks to water damage, the building’s back wall will have to be replaced.

“A lot of these old 20th century buildings of this style, the roofs gently slope back,” Hammons said. “They put the scuppers [gutters] in the back because they didn’t want them in the front of the building. When these buildings sit vacant, those scuppers clog over time, and water sits on the roof seeping into the back wall. The back wall of this building was braced, which is lucky for us. Almost every building of this type you see that’s been left empty, the back wall has usually collapsed.”

From initial examinations, the back wall bricks appear to be in better shape than anticipated, Hammons said.

“It’s not going to be knocked down with a wrecking ball,” Hammons said. “They will take it down meticulously and examine each brick. We hope to re-use as much as we can and find similar bricks for the rest.”

Workers have cut into the buildings cement floor, which was not original and will be torn out, and stripped paint to once again reveal the structure’s original brick exterior.

In addition to the classrooms and storage areas, the front of the center will house a window display of classic automobiles in tribute to the building’s auto dealership past.

“What we want is for the outside to be as handsome as possible so that everyone who goes by will go ‘wow,’ ” Hammons said. “We want to have a quality facility. Kind of like the projects Howard Dudley has done on the south side.”

Charlie Briles, Nedderman project supervisor, said he’s looking forward to the project.

“We do everything construction wise, but we’ve been doing quite a few historic projects over the last 10 years or so,” Briles said. “It’s a little more labor intensive, and you have to use a bit more care because you’re taking things down and putting a lot of it back up instead of just putting a building up. But it’s worth it.”