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21th Anniversary!
SVHS Strong Vincent High School
Erie, PA  USA
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Today's Featured Biography

 

David NOVICKI

PUBLISHED: JUNE 04. 2010

Watson-Curtze curator shares passion for Erie history

David Novicki sipped his coffee and listened as a docent led Millcreek Township schoolchildren through the Watson-Curtze Mansion on Tuesday.

He'd toured the house himself in eighth grade, as a Strong Vincent High School senior, and almost daily since he was hired as part-time museum curator this fall.

"Never in my wildest dreams as a boy did I imagine that I'd be curator here one day," Novicki, 29, said. "It's amazing how things fall into place and how life works out."

Novicki has been part-time curator with the Erie County Historical Society since September, and has been sharing his enthusiasm for local history with Watson-Curtze Mansion visitors since.

He opened the mansion's billiards room to the public on May 1 and has been sharing items from the museum's collection with each visitor who asks.

"I try to show each person something that will mean something to him, especially children," Novicki said. "I got interested in the Civil War as a child when a re-enactor held up a weapon and asked if I wanted to hold it. It's a passion that I want to pass on to other people."

Novicki recently allowed a boy interested in World War II history to hold a Japanese samurai sword. During the billiards room opening, he polled members of the audience on their interests and brought out items from storage related to each -- including George Washington's penknife, Victorian wedding gowns, and a flag that draped Abraham Lincoln's coffin.

Museum visitors, wearing special gloves that Novicki provided, helped to unfurl a room-sized Nazi banner during the event. "Touching isn't always a bad thing," Novicki said. "It helps people make a connection to the past."

Nursing a love of history

Novicki's first connection to Erie's past came by exploring the bayfront neighborhood where he was raised.

"I grew up playing in the ruins of the Strong estate, and always had a sense of what it was, or had been. It left an impression on me," Novicki said.

Novicki graduated from the high school named after the Strong family's most famous member, Civil War Col. Strong Vincent, in 1999. He earned a nursing certificate at Mercyhurst North East and went on to Mercyhurst College to study social-studies education, graduating in 2007.

"You never hear of many history jobs," Novicki said. "But I saw an ad for this job in the paper, applied, and tried not to show how excited I was during the interview. I got lucky."

A former Civil War re-enactor with the re-mustered 111th Pennsylvania Infantry for gatherings at Gettysburg and Antietam, Novicki stacked his reproduction uniform and arms to examine and catalog actual Civil War artifacts -- plus artifacts of Gen. "Mad" Anthony Wayne, "enough pieces of the original Niagara to build another ship," the world wars, and clothing of every era from 1750 on -- in the Watson-Curtze Mansion's massive collection of 80,000 objects.

"I walk into this house every day and go on an expedition instead of going to work," Novicki said. "There's so much history here, it's like a treasure hunt every day."

Pockets of unexplored history

Novicki opened the Watson-Curtze mansion's original billiards room during the museum's annual Market at the Mansion on May 1 and 2.

The mansion, along Erie's Millionaire's Row at 356 W. Sixth St., was built in 1891 by industrialist Harrison Watson for himself, his wife, Carrie Tracy Watson, and their daughter, Winifred.

The home's office with built-in wooden desk, cabinets and storage drawers, the opulent master bedroom and bath, and the third-floor billiards room off the ballroom, were Harrison Watson's domain and today continue to attract male guests.

"The whole house is amazing," visitor Bill Guenther, of Westfield, N.Y., said during the billiard room's unveiling. "But this room, I'd like to have in my house."

The billiards room wasn't so inviting in fall, when it was piled high with boxes, documents and clothing. Novicki, with help from volunteers, waded in and cleared objects into other areas of the house for storage. He stripped away wall coverings that were beyond salvage, repaired dry wall, painted, and oversaw the refinishing of the hardwood floor. He also searched for items original to the room, as shown in period photographs, or that were there for a room-by-room insurance inventory in 1918.

"Of all the things that had been in the billiards room, only the $50,000 billiards table built for the house was still there," Novicki said. Novicki found a sofa, billiard balls and cue sticks scattered around the house and in the attic of the adjacent Erie Planetarium, once the mansion's carriage house. "Finding the things that belonged in (the billiards room) was like a giant scavenger hunt," Novicki said.

History yet to be made

Novicki next would like to restore the ladies' lounge located near the billiards room and open the third floor servants' quarters to the public.

"A lot of times, servants' rooms are what people ask to see," he said. It was some time after Novicki started as curator that he explored servants' rooms himself. "I was here almost three months before I opened the door and found another half a house," he said.

Opening the mansion's two-story attic and a bomb shelter added in the basement when Erie School District administration offices were housed in the home are other Novicki goals.

The house was sold to the Frederick Curtze family in 1923, and, after Curtze's death in 1941, was offered to the Erie School District as a museum. It is owned and operated today by the Erie County Historical Society.

Novicki's days in the house may be too limited to accomplish his plans. His job is funded by a grant expected to end this summer.

For now, he continues to catalog museum holdings on computer, plan exhibits, and ask museum visitors what they'd like to see.

The runaway public favorite is the Lincoln flag, which draped the president's casket during the funeral train's stop in Albany, N.Y. The flag was presented to the New York governor when the train departed and was inherited by the governor's daughter, who moved to Erie and gave the flag to her adopted city.

The flag is stored, folded, in acid-free wrappings. "The Historical Society is nonprofit and has done the best it can with a limited budget. But the flag shouldn't be folded so many times and in a box," Novicki said.

He estimates the cost of sealing and framing the flag at more than $10,000.

Young visitors to the mansion have a more immediate interest in the past.

"They always ask if the mansion is haunted," Novicki said. Novicki will only say that, if it is, he hopes that the ghosts are pleased with his accomplishments in his brief tenure as curator of their home.

"I like to think that if the Watsons or Curtzes are still here, they approve of what I've done, and feel that I've helped restore some of the mansion's original beauty," he said.

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