NIAGARA FALLS, N.Y. (WIVB)- A new museum in Niagara Falls will take visitors through often forgotten history. The Niagara Falls Underground Railroad Heritage Center opens on May 4.
The last few walls are going up before the exhibits are assembled. The exhibit elements were just delivered Friday.
“It’s emotional for a lot of us,” said Bill Bradberry, the chairman of the Underground Railroad Heritage Area Corp. “This is, in a sense, the end of a long trail and in another sense the beginning of a long journey.”
Bradberry has spent his entire life working towards this. The vision for the Heritage Center really took hold about 10 years ago, with the help of state lawmakers.
It will preserve the stories of slaves who journeyed to freedom and celebrate the people who helped them along the way.
“We want to immerse people in the very real history of what actually happened right here in this neighborhood,” said Bradberry.
In one part of the museum, visitors will be able to walk over a bridge with the sounds of trains overhead and water rushing below.
Bradberry told News 4 it imitates the trip Harriet Tubman helped fugitive slave Joe Bailey take right here in Western New York.
“When they finally arrived on the other side of the bridge, Joe climbed out of the train fell to the ground kissed it and cried but there is a lot more to that story and we are going to try to tell what that story is really all about here,” said Bradberry.
The museum will also share the history of the Cataract House, a 600 room luxury hotel, where waiters helped countless people escape to freedom in Canada.
“We have a lot of history, a lot of recorded history but it’s been lost to our memory,” said Bradberry.
The museum is being housed in an 1863 U.S. Customs House, attached to the new train station. The walls of the new state of the art Amtrak station will be lined with illustrations depicting the journeys so many made as part of the Underground Railroad. The pictures will lead visitors to the museum next door.
Bradberry said it’s symbolic that the new station is attached to the old customs house. He hopes the history at the museum will give visitors perspective for what’s happening now.
“We are very, very hopeful this is just the beginning of a process that will help us to infuse this history into our patchwork, into the fabric of our understanding of our history and our culture,” said Bradberry.
He told News 4 he hopes the Heritage Center will inspire more research into the Cataract House and its role in the Underground Railroad. Bradberry also wants to see research that peels back the layers of what else was happening in WNY during the 19th century.
Bradberry told News 4 the museum is funded through casino revenue. It’s cost roughly a million dollars.
