History of the Sioux City Public Museum

However, there is no evidence the Sioux City Lyceum (a lecture and debate club) maintained a collection. There is evidence the Scientific Association did have a collection, as early as 1885, and this became the basis of a museum, maintained by the Sioux City Academy of Science and Letters (1903-1941), (the Scientific Association’s successor), until 1939 when it merged with other collections and became known as the Sioux City Public Museum.

The first reference of a museum (maintained by the Scientific Association) was written by the Sioux City Academy of Science and Letter’s curator, H. C. Powers, in the Proceedings of the Sioux City Academy of Science and Letters, 1905: “On November 19th, 1887, the County Board of Supervisors granted to the Scientific Association the use of the room of the County Superintendent of Schools in the Court House for its meetings and also space in the same room for its cases of specimens.”

Then a second reference to the Scientific Association’s collection was in the curator’s Report of the Proceedings of the Sioux City Academy of Science and Letters in 1906: “As a pearl grows from its small nucleus by continued accretions from without, so has our collection grown from its first single specimen brought to a meeting of the old Scientific Association back in the year of its beginning, 1885, until now (1906) when we have a large lot of specimens, thousands in number.”

The meeting place, and supposedly the collections of the Scientific Association, moved around the city from the courthouse to the high school to the city library. Then on March 31, 1903, a proposal to change the name (and broaden the scope of the work of the Scientific Association) to the Sioux City Academy of Science and Letters, stated, “The object of the organization shall be the diffusion of knowledge and the promotion of original investigation in the Natural Sciences, History, Political Science, Sociology, Literature and other branches of useful knowledge, by the reading and publishing of original papers, establishing and maintaining a museum and library and by other suitable means.”

This resolution was adopted Oct. 27, 1903. The collection of artifacts, under the newly formed Sioux City Academy of Science and Letters, found a home at Morningside College.

The collection was moved in the spring of 1906 to the library on the second floor of the old city hall at Sixth and Douglas streets. This collection was moved from that location to the new city library at Sixth and Jackson streets around 1920.

In 1938, the Lion’s Club decided to take on a project of revitalizing the old Academy of Science and Letters’ museum collection and merging that collection with a large Native American collection, the George G. Inman Collection.

Inman was designated education curator of the Native American collection by the Sioux City Board of Education. The Woodbury County Pioneer Club also donated historical manuscripts to the museum that it had been collecting.

By late 1939 the City of Sioux City became involved in the museum when the City Council approved the appointment (designated by Mayor David F. Loepp) of Mrs. Ralph A. Henderson as curator of the museum.

A Sept. 22, 1939, article stated, “Acting on suggestion of the members of the Museum board present, Mayor Loepp then mentioned M. H. White and Judge A. O. Wakefield as members of the museum board and the appointments were confirmed by the council.”

The museum was now being called the Sioux City Public Museum. In 1941 the City of Sioux City became known as Iowa’s only municipality to operate a museum.

The Woodbury County Historical Society (including the Academy of Science and Letters) at some point became defunct. The museum collection was kept in the public library during the 1940s and 1950s.

On May 1, 1959, a City resolution No. R-8611, “…providing for establishment of a Sioux City Museum Board and for the conduct of a museum program by a museum director” was passed by the city.

The Junior League bought the Peirce Mansion in 1958 and deeded it to the City for a cultural center. The Sioux City Public Museum moved out of the library into this facility at 29th and Jackson streets and opened to the public in 1961.