Organizers of Chicago’s Museum of Broadcast Communications held a preview party Thursday night to celebrate progress in constructing the new building.
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The event marked the end of major construction of the 62,000-square-foot facility in a former parking garage at 360 N. State St.
The event is something of a progress report, said Bruce DuMont, the museum’s founder and a longtime Chicago broadcaster.
Once the museum is completed it will feature a wall in the downstairs lobby that will honor the executives and personalities who made their mark in Chicago before moving on to national fame, including the Belushi brothers, Walt Disney, Bernie Mac, William Paley and Betty White.
The second floor will house the Paul & Angel Harvey Radio Studio, which will accommodate remote live broadcasts and have live-streaming capabilities.
The Museum of Broadcast Communications was founded in 1982 by DuMont with $250 in seed money from the Chicago/Midwest Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences.
DuMont said he first thought of building a broadcast museum after he saw the cavalier way local stations handled their archives.
“People would basically pat me on the head and say it was a good idea and we should do it someday,” DuMont said. “I said, ‘Let’s not meet 20 years from now and wish we would have done this 40 years ago.'”
The museum opened in a building in River City in 1987, then moved to the Chicago Cultural Center in 1992.
The museum closed its facility at the cultural center in 2003 as DuMont sought a new and bigger home for it. The museum has maintained a presence on the Web at http://www.museum.tv.
“We knew it would be a major task to find a location, and we didn’t think it would be wise to do that and operate the museum. I didn’t realize how long it would take us. If I had to do it again, I would make a different decision,” he said.
Since then, the museum has progressed through fits and starts.
DuMont’s unwavering faith in the project and its potential as a major tourism draw has sustained him through the down times.
“It is not hometown boosterism to say that much of radio and television history was made here or made by people who came through here,” he said.
DuMont said he hopes to open the museum to the public in time for its 25th anniversary in 2012. He has raised $21 million since 2002 and estimates he needs $5 million more to complete the exhibits, Dumont said.