Jeffersonville IN Fire Museum Secures $600K for Building, Restoration Efforts

Aug. 9—JEFFERSONVILLE — After three years of raising money, the Vintage Fire Museum's capital campaign has been completed with over $600,000 contributed for the purchase and restoration of its building.

The museum, at 706 Spring St., Jeffersonville, has been at its location since 2020. It had been at other sites, including just across the street from the current spot.

To celebrate the purchase and success of the capital campaign, the museum will host an event at 4 p.m. Sunday. The event is free to the public and residents are encouraged to attend to celebrate the cause.

"The building is purchased and paid for, the renovations were taken care of and paid for," said Curtis Peters, the Vintage Fire Museum's board chair. "All of that has been done, leaving no debt with this at all."

Fred Conway's personal collection, which he started in the 1970s, lead to the creation of the museum.

Conway was encouraged to open his own vintage fire museum in June 1999. Three months later he died unexpectedly and the museum, which was then off Mt. Tabor Road in New Albany, closed down.

In 2010, the museum purchased Conway's collection. It's one of the largest collections of vintage fire equipment in the country.

"Everything was behind locked doors for 10 years," Peters said. "Someone heard that it was going to be sold on auction or eBay. We were concerned that the collection would be broken up and that it would also be gone from this area."

Peters and others were able to create a nonprofit organization to make an offer for the collection and they were able to buy it.

They moved the collection to a vacated Coyle Chevrolet building in downtown New Albany before settling in Jeffersonville in 2014.

With the new building, they are able to display all of their collection freely as well as offer more activities for the people who visit the museum.

"This building, the atmosphere of it is better with the high ceilings," Peters said. "We can display better our equipment in a better arrangement. And we've added a safety education area with a bedroom and a kitchen."

With the education area they are able to teach classes and families what someone should do if there is a fire in their house.

The museum also designed the front of the building to honor firefighters and their service to their communities.

"There are really three purposes that we try to serve, one is honoring firefighters, second is safety and third is telling the history of firefighting," Peters said.

The collection includes equipment not only from Southern Indiana but also from around the country, which tells a more complete story of the history of firefighting.

Now that the organization owns the building, there's not a worry about having to move again.

"We have a good location, it's a prominent location," Peters said. "We have visitors from all over the nation... just a couple of days ago we had somebody make a specific trip down here from Northern Indiana just to see this museum."

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