“WHAT’S UP” WITH THE RENTON HISTORICALSOCIETY?
- treasurer1408
- Dec 26, 2025
- 4 min read
The latest on the Historical Society, the Renton History Museum, and a relevant history leading
up to our present status and future goals.
RHS and the Renton History Museum: A Long-Standing Partnership
An Interview with Tom Monahan
Founded in 1966 by local teachers and librarians with the goal of preserving Renton’s history, RHS began operations by organizing small exhibits at local libraries. In 1979, RHS and the City of Renton partnered on the development of the Renton History Museum, located in Historic Fire Station #1. The City staffs the museum while RHS volunteers help with research, archival projects, grants, and community events.
This historic building, which so many of you know as the center for all things Renton history is now temporarily closed(as of Fall 2025) for renovations to upgrade the safety of the building and to outfit it to better serve as a future center for a wide-variety of community engagement opportunities. Per the City of Renton, “The result will be a fresh face on the historic building, just in time for the nation’s 250th anniversary year.” While the Renton History Museum is closed, the Society will be operating separately from, but in partnership with the museum and the City of Renton. We look forward to partnering with the City again after the upgrade! We will simply be doing things like issuing our newsletters, providing genealogy services, scanning
services, and making decisions on how to best display our collection.
Recently, Dr. Elizabeth Flanagan of RHS sat down to interview former Assistant to the Museum Director and Collections Manager, Tom Monahan. Their conversation provided a look into the partnership between RHS and the museum, as well as his thoughts on some relevant history of the partnership.
Monahan was born and raised in Renton, as was his mother. While Tom worked for the Museum and with RHS, he obtained a certificate in Museum Studies from the University of Washington and shared with Dr. Flanagan some of his takeaways from this specialization and its application to propelling RHS forward. Thanks to Monahan’s advice, the RHS Board is pursuing a project to virtually feature particular artifacts from our collection. Monahan stressed, “You’ve got the collection you’ve got,” while encouraging us to simply start getting information out to the community via short videos for social media and the RHS website.
During the interview, they also discussed bringing back traveling exhibits. One of the duties Tom fondly remembers helping with was assisting the director, Steve Anderson, in preparing the traveling exhibits and helping to distribute them to various locations, like the senior center, City Hall, as well as a few banks and other places. His passion for sharing the artifacts and exhibits with museum patrons was a great asset. “I was the main person when someone would come in and research a topic. I would be the one who helped them find what they were looking for.” He went on to say that sometimes this would lead him to do research for an article. One of his “main [duties] was doing research and writing articles for the newsletter...” Tom wrote for the RHS newsletter starting in the late 1990s up until around 2012. While the RHS is temporarily limited in how we can put our collection on display, we plan to take up Tom’s passion for sharing Renton’s history via traveling exhibits around town. Please reach out if you have ideas for traveling exhibits or where you might like to see them displayed!
The Big Move
As was previously mentioned, the physical location of the Renton History Museum in Historic Fire Station #1 has now (temporarily) closed. The first project the current Board of Directors took over at the end of June was to facilitate the move of RHS’s 40,000+ artifacts from the Museum to our new, but temporary, location: the Renton Technical College Annex Building (behind Greenwood Memorial Park). The RHS office and a significant portion of our collection will be hosted here until a proper museum space can be secured.
Former board member and Interim Executive Director Dr. Elizabeth Flanagan coordinated with the RHS Board, the City of Renton Parks Department, and Hansen Brothers Moving & Storage to execute a flawless move of our large and invaluable collection. Over the course of one week, fragile artifacts were protected, documents and paper artifacts were filed and boxed, and everything was carefully organized and transported from the Museum to RHS’s new headquarters at the RTC Annex.
Current Status and Goals
Though limited by space to artfully display proper museum exhibits at this time, RHS members and the general public are always welcome to visit our new space. Come tour the space, view the careful storage of our collection, meet our new office manager, Jennifer Douwes, or brainstorm future possibilities for the Society with other community members!
The RHS Board maintains communication with the City of Renton, keeping the option of moving back to Historic Fire Station #1 post-renovation open, to re-establish the museum there. The Board is also busy networking and searching for other opportunities that may help the RHS collection be displayed to its full potential in a future community-centered museum space. Some of these opportunities include traveling exhibits in partnership with the Renton Civic Theater, involvement in Arts, Sciences, & Heritage Week with INSPIRE Washington, and involvement with City of Renton events, including America250 and the City’s 125th Birthday.
Due to our current transition out of the Renton History Museum and into a more temporary space, there is so much potential for RHS over the next year and beyond. We are excited to offer as many events and opportunities as possible for members while working to establish a more permanent museum space. We look forward to seeing RHS members and volunteers around our new building and would love to include you, however we can, in our shared love
for Renton, its history, and the history of those who have lived here.
Would you like to view a PDF of the full, print newsletter? Please click on the Download image to the right, below.
