Reexamining the Old Depot Museum in Selma

Two CADC faculty brought a new approach to preservation that will allow visitors to access the building and museum collection in a new way. The Selma/Dallas County Museum of History and Archives is housed in the former L&N Railroad Depot and is listed on the Water Avenue Historic District National Register of Historic Places. The museum’s collections range from prehistoric to the Civil Rights Movement, illustrating how a site that was once home to a Confederate foundry because a critical repository for the preservation and interpretation of critical documents, artifacts, and photographs related to Bloody Sunday and its aftermath.

CADC faculty Junshan Liu and Danielle Willkens (now Assistant Professor at Georgia Tech) used LiDAR, 360-degree photography, photogrammetry, and UAVs to fully record the museum’s historic fabric. They also created a set of as-built drawings in CAD to documents the dimensions and conditions of the Old Depot Museum building, which will help the museum to assess the building for repair and restoration. The team also worked to digitize selected items within the museum collection that is related to the Civil Rights Movement (e.g., Bloody Sunday State Trooper uniform). Take a virtual tour of the museum and collection here: https://selmamuseum.org/virtual-tour 

Liu and Willkens’ work at the museum also informed a larger project related to Bloody Sunday in Selma, Alabama.

Junshan Liu is Associate Professor in the McWhorter School of Building Science. Danielle Willkens is Assistant Professor at Georgia Tech.