RBEM Celebrates! Historic Carnegie to Be Preserved!

Volume 02 | September 18, 2019

Dear Friends of the Ray Bradbury Experience Museum,

Today, we’re celebrating the news! The historic Carnegie Library will be preserved as an architectural treasure in Waukegan. The now vacant building at 1 N. Sheridan Road was transferred to the Waukegan Park District by the Waukegan City Council on September 16, 2019. Carnegie Transfer Press Release

We wholeheartedly agree with Jay Lerner, Executive Director, Waukegan Park District, “The community can be assured that this project will strengthen not only downtown but Waukegan as a whole.” The RBEM Committee looks forward to continuing our collaboration with the Waukegan Park District and the City of Waukegan as we grow RBEM’s future.

As we look around us today, we see it emerging: downtown Waukegan as a Bradbury-themed destination that will attract local, regional, national, and international visitors.

It will be exciting watch the renovation of the Carnegie, though it will take years. The Carnegie will tell one part of Ray Bradbury’s story—his love for the Waukegan Carnegie Library and how it was the “great watering hole” for his imagination.

Here at 13 N. Genesee, just a block to the west, the future Ray Bradbury Experience Museum will offer immersive experiences into Bradbury’s themes of space and time travel, freedom of expression, love, magic, and something wicked. RBEM will be the hometown museum Ray Bradbury deserves.

A few more blocks away, “Fantastical Traveler,” the Ray Bradbury Statue , unveiled August 22, 2019, shines in front of the Waukegan Public Library.

Nearby is Ray Bradbury Park , now a national literary landmark, with its famed ravine and bridge that Bradbury immortalized in Bradbury’s novel Dandelion Wine .

It’s happening! Build with us and share the excitement. Help open the Ray Bradbury Experience Museum.

Visit www.raybradburyexperiencemuseum.org /donate.

#BringRayBradburyHome

Sincerely,

Sandy

Sandra Sarsha Petroshius

RBEM Committee Chair

Ray Bradbury Experience Museum Committee

Sandra Sarsha Petroshius, Chair Irene Edgar Terry Fertig

Robert Gourley Sue Kaiser, J.D.,CRFE Mikayla Khramov

Shai Lothan John Patrick Mullins, Ph.D. Patrick O’Keefe Vance D. Wyatt

The Ray Bradbury Experience Museum is a program of the Greater Waukegan Development Coalition (GWDC), a 501(c)(3) economic development organization.

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The Ray Bradbury Destination!

Historic Carnegie Library at 1 North Sheridan Road to come under possession of Waukegan Park District, early 2020.

Future Ray Bradbury Experience Museum "Martian Chronicles" area at 13 N. Genesee Street. Capital Campaign underway to open for Centennial of Ray Bradbury's 100th birth in Waukegan.

Above: Dedication of Ray Bradbury Park as a National Literary Landmark, March 16, 2019, featured a dramatization of "The Whole Town Is Sleeping."

Right: Ray Bradbury Statue, unveiled August 22, 2019, at Waukegan Public Library was celebrated with the Waukegan Symphony Orchestra, Capt. James Lovell, and a huge crowd of thrilled onlookers.