Museum’s renovations include ongoing repairs

The Sea Cliff Village Museum has been one of the many hidden gems of the Sound-side community for nearly 50 years. Now, thanks to its ongoing renovations, museum and village officials hope that it will become an even more prominent attraction for residents and visitors to Sea Cliff.
The museum was founded in 1976, following the celebration of America’s bicentennial. Residents banded together to create the museum in an effort to preserve, research and categorize the village’s unique history.
James Versocki, a Sea Cliff village trustee and the board’s liaison with the museum, emphasized its importance to the community. He recounted how he discovered a photo of his house when it was being constructed in 1909, and how learning about its history made him feel an even greater connection with Sea Cliff.
“I always say this, but Sea Cliff is a really unique place with a very deep history,” Versocki explained. “It provides these tidbits of knowledge that as new residents come into the village, really allows them to connect to it.”
Since then, the museum has been a mainstay of the community, amassing a collection of documents, photographs, artifacts, tools and art from across many different periods of the village’s history. Most recently, they collected artifacts submitted by the community that related to the Covid-19 pandemic, from face masks to photos, for an exhibit they plan to hold in a few years.

However, the museum building itself, which is attached to the library and Village Hall, was beginning to enter a state of disrepair when current director Courtney Chambers took over in April of 2019. The village board sets aside some funds for the museum every year, which has accumulated to roughly $30,00. In 2021 that money was activated and has been used for ongoing building repairs and renovations.
Taking advantage of the museum’s Covid-induced closure, repairs to the building’s attic, the principal storage space for many of the village’s artifacts when not on display, began in early July of 2021. While those repairs were moving forward, Chambers and the village board realized that it made sense to keep taking advantage of the lull and begin more intensive renovations.
“So, the attic took quite a while. It also needed new sheetrock, and while we were doing that it really snowballed,” Chambers recalled. “From there we thought, ‘Well, as long as we’re closed, let’s do as much as we can.’”
After finishing the attic, the work continued to the first floor. The space was repainted with a lighter, more welcoming color scheme, and LED lights were installed in the walls, which are better for maintaining the quality of historical artifacts.
While the museum is holding off on similar repairs to the second floor until they finish showing their current exhibit, “Sea Cliff by the Sea: Sea Cliff’s Waterfront in the Resort Era 1890-1920” in November, other renovations are still ongoing. The museum plans on installing an air conditioning unit in the basement, to provide better climate control for artifacts stored there, which can easily be damaged by humidity if not carefully looked after.
Throughout the process, the majority of the repair work was done by NC Home Improvement Inc, a Locust Valley-based contractor which has worked with the museum before. Nilton Cordero, owner of the company, explained that while working on historical buildings such as the Village Museum presents challenges, it’s worth it for the benefit it provides to the community.
“Any job we work on is a little challenging in its own way, especially the museum,” Cordero said. “We tried to make it the most beautiful, to keep the style it had before, and everybody worked real hard to maintain that style for the museum.”
Although Covid initially slowed much of the renovation process down as supply chain issues made finding certain tools and materials a challenge for the contractors, it is hoped that the future projects will not face similar hurdles. Residents will hopefully be able to enjoy the finished building by late December of this year or early January of next year.