HAMMOND | The last day of business at the John Dillinger Museum in the Indiana Welcome Center came Tuesday on the 80th anniversary of the notorious criminal’s death in Chicago.
In anticipation of a move in the spring to the Old Lake County Courthouse in Crown Point, the South Shore Convention and Visitors Authority closed its museum in the visitors center at the end of the day Tuesday, eight decades after law enforcement officers put an end to Dillinger’s criminal career, and life, on July 22, 1934.
“We just thought it was the logical day to end its life as it has existed for the past 15 years -- in anticipation of the next generation,” said Speros Batistatos, authority president and CEO.
The SSCVA board and the Lake Court House Foundation last week approved an eight-year agreement to move the museum to the old courthouse.
The Hammond version of the Dillinger Museum opened in 1999, using a collection of artifacts purchased from the estate of the owner of a Dillinger museum in Nashville, Ind.
The museum described Dillinger’s life and times chronologically, using artifacts, copies of newspaper accounts, period household items, several interactive displays and life-size dioramas. It tracks in detail Dillinger's years as one of America’s most notorious criminals.
The new museum will be about the same size as the current one — 2,000 square feet — but the presentation will be updated. In addition to several videos, the display at the visitors center was largely static, with rudimentary interactive displays.
“We have to do a complete technological review,” Batistatos said.
Flat screens, touch screens, digital audio and other technologies didn’t exist when the museum was planned in the late 1990s, he noted.
There also is a significant amount of archived material not on display at the current museum that will be considered for the new one.
And “we will continue to have, as we have all along, a very pro-law enforcement message,” Batistatos said.
But, there is one piece in the museum’s collection that won’t be making the trip to Crown Point. The 1933 Hudson Essex Terraplane 8 car, an example of the type of high-powered car the Dillinger gang would have used, won’t fit into the old courthouse.
So pending board approval, the car will be sold.
The car runs, and was used in the 2009 movie “Public Enemies,” based on Dillinger's life of crime.
The SSCVA has budgeted $300,000 for the museum move. Group Delphi, a Fort Wayne firm that specializes in museum design and whose predecessor company designed the current museum, will plan and manage creating the new museum.
Plans call for a March 3 grand opening on the first floor of the old courthouse — in time for the 81st anniversary of Dillinger’s escape from the Lake County Jail, just southeast of the old courthouse on Main Street.
Meanwhile, the museum space in the Indiana Visitors Center will most likely be used as either a “museum incubator,” Batistatos said, or for a retail establishment, such as a Starbucks. A portion of the space will be used to expand the center’s gift shop.