The Gate House as a Museum

Greeting visitors since 1997

The Gate House Museum transferred to the Town of Sykesville in 1997. Since then, a host of curators, volunteers, and supporters have kept the museum free and open to the public.

Draft: Our Story

Before there was a museum, there was a room of history.

In 1975, Thelma Wimmer, an activist and citizen of Sykesville, began accepting objects within the Room of History. This collection was housed on the second floor of the Town House building at 7547 Main Street. As the town grew, space for these objects became more limited, and the collection was boxed. While other locations, such as the Sykesville Station building, were considered as museum space, other uses were more pressing for the town at the time.

In 1997, A new home was found for the collection at the Gate House.

Millard Cooper Park, Sykesville's first town park, had been dedicated in 1983, but in the early 1990s, Springfield Hospital wished to gift additional land to the Town, including the Gate House. The Gate House had seen many occupants since its 1904 construction, but at the time of its transfer had been empty for decades.

Volunteers worked to restore the space.

Burst pipes, structural problems, and quite a bit of