New Building Will House Wait's Mill Display

WAITSBURG – Is it a deck? Is it a stage? No, it's a massive display case!

The Times (whose Waitsburg reporter happens to live next door to the Wilson-Phillips House) has kept a curious eye on the recent flurry of activity taking place in the backyard of the house/museum owned and operated by the Waitsburg Historical Society. It turns out the burgeoning structure will be a mini-house that will hold a scale model replica of Wait's Mill.

The plan was to display the model inside the Wilson-Phillips house garage, which will be transformed into an old-time workshop. However, a recently-received photo of the work in progress revealed that plan wasn't going to work. The model is much larger than anticipated and is being constructed on an 8-foot-square base. Time for Plan B.

Historical Society member Rod Baker, who has worked steadily to transform the interior of the Wilson-Phillips garage, decided to add one more project to his list. He would build a 16' by 16' "house" to display the model. At 78-years-old, Baker wasted no time erecting the building. In less than a week he, almost singlehandedly, set footings, built the floor, framed the structure and had it sided.

"Dave Harbaugh helped one day, but I've done the rest myself," he said. Baker was a framing contractor in Alaska for five years before working as a general contractor there for 37 years. "In the past, I could have done this much in a day. But when you're 78 and working alone things tend to go a bit slower," he said.

The structure is built so that it can be moved, if needed. "It's all screwed together – no nails. You can pick it up by one corner and not have it fall apart," said Baker. The building has a large opening on both the east and west sides and a "man door" on the south. The large openings will have railings across them and carriage doors, identical to those on the garage, will close off the display. Visitors will be able to stand at the railings and view the model from either side of the building.

Baker said there won't be any traffic through the building itself. He plans to finish the structure off with a hip roof to match the Wilson-Phillips house. "I'm guaranteeing that the display building will be ready for Celebration Days on May 16," said Baker. "The garage will depend on whether or not I get enough hands to help get it set up," he added.

Baker has transformed the inside of the garage by lining the walls with boards cut from the fence that once separated the Wilson-Phillips House from the Bruce Memorial House property. He has installed display lighting on the ceiling and says more will be added. The space, which currently houses a woodstove and an old forge, will showcase old tools, a blacksmith's bench, three old vises and several pieces from Wait's Mill.

"It's exciting that we should have three mill displays in time for Celebration Days," said Historical Society member Jeff Broom. "We'll have the displays up at the mill site, the mill replica, and the displays in the Wilson-Phillips garage."