The 2018 open house put on as a joint venture by the Wilmette Police Department and the Wilmette Historical Museum attracted enthusiastic visitors to both Ridge Avenue locations Sunday, museum and police representatives said.
“It was a great turnout, and we got some very positive feedback from a lot of the families who came,” Police Chief Kyle Murphy said. “We had plenty of first time visitors and plenty of return visitors as well.”
Visitors to the department headquarters at 710 Ridge Road could tour the facilities, including the village’s lock-up and the firearms range. They could also see displays put on by some of the agencies with which the Police Department works, Murphy said.
That included the U.S. Coast Guard, which operates a station in Wilmette, and which had one of its boats on display.
“The Evanston Police brought their (canine) unit, which is always a big hit, and our major crash assistance team, which operates under the auspices of the North Regional Major Crimes Task Force, had a display as well,” Murphy said.
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Laura Winston, the museum’s outreach director, said one of the popular draws, staffed by junior docents from the museum’s History Detectives program, was the What Is It table.
“There were things that people might not recognize today, like an old-fashioned card shuffler, and a laundry pounder-plunger, which was one of the oldest things on the table,” she said. “And for some of our really young visitors, we had a rotary phone with an old-fashioned phone book, so they could figure out how to find someone’s number.”
The Wilmette Community Band performed in concert on the museum lawn, and visitors were also able to see the original jail cell in the museum’s 1896 building at 609 Ridge Road, which was once the town hall for Gross Pointe, one of Wilmette’s founding communities.