Museum on the Move: Exploring the Orlando Science Center

ORLANDO, Fla. – “Time compression” might not be real, but it does sound right.

I was told the term by an AI that I’d asked, “Why does it feel like time gets shorter as you age?”

To that question, I couldn’t get a straight answer from another person, but the AI in an instant replied, very confidently, “Time compression.”

So, time compression might not even be real, but it does sound right, for me.

I wanted to know. Not necessarily to start this article, but to just put words to feelings. Today I’m 27, but tomorrow I’ll blink and those numbers will switch.

I’ve lived my whole life here in Orlando, enough time that everything, for me, now appears to be disappearing. Each year I look around and find fewer pieces of my past, I mean. Fashion Square Mall cut the A/C months ago, Disney’s Animal Kingdom will soon replace the wonderful Dinoland, still reeking of the 1990s, even the funny blue and pink consignment shop in College Park has a new base coat on it. Feels like it’s all going away. Or, is it just changing?

That’s just what it’s like here, growing up in an ever-altered place like Orlando. At this point, as a sixth-generation Floridian, nostalgia can be a downright painful experience. I shudder to even think about what my mother’s generation has lost; they got to see the kitschy roadside attraction Florida disappear, simple but irreplaceable handmade fun. We’re both now left with Amscots and Lime scooters.

Sometimes though, I’m rewarded for committing myself to disappearing things. Time compression be damned, sometimes there is closure.

Closure in the case of that Disney stuff could be something like a final ride, a tour of the engine room for example, but my “Florida resident privilege” can really only get me into those parks, not necessarily behind anything.

What’s always been more accessible to me, and just as beloved, is the Orlando Science Center.

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Like some of us, the science center has undergone many changes as its shell approaches 30 years old.

Its more-than $30 million Unlock Science campaign began around 2013, a long-term plan to renovate and expand different experiences and learning opportunities at OSC. Such projects have always been funded through a collection of donors, grants and public support. According to Jeff Stanford, VP of marketing, the bill after a decade of these changes is actually probably closer to $35 million.

Seeking that behind-the-scenes closure I mentioned, a chance to explore, I reached out to Jeff for a second tour. The first I got in June 2019, I’ll come back to that.

The roughly 200,000-square-foot, observatory-topped facility in Loch Haven Park was completed in 1997, 37 years after OSC set up shop in what eventually became Orlando Shakes. Even now, from the thespian theatre’s parking lot — built out with bricks we’ve seen all over town, sourced from turn-of-the-century companies Graves Brick and Southern Manufacturing, though we’re told the city no longer has those records — you can still see the planetarium dome and time-tinted observatory atop OSC’s old home.

The architecture group that claims the newer Orlando Science Center — Helman Hurley Charvat Peacock Architects, based in Orlando — lists several other well-known Orlando-area structures in its portfolio. These include LYNX Central Station, the Orange County Convention Center and the American Adventure Pavilion at EPCOT’s World Showcase for starters.

Wide eggshell-colored walls protect 42,000 square feet of exhibit space, 12,000 square feet of classrooms and sky-high, pitch-dark ceilings that widen the pupils in transit as you enter through a catwalk HHCP named “Sky Bridge” and made out to resemble a DNA double helix. An “aluminum space frame” system called Omni* Hub, developed by CST Industries, was used not only here but also at the science center’s western school bus loop, on most of the guardrails and, wouldn’t you know it, at LYNX Central Station.

Though the building remains largely architecturally unchanged since the late ‘90s, that description is outwardly. Inside, even if you were blindfolded, just the smell of construction from the first floor would tip you off to changes still happening.

Dr. Phillips Cinedome: The beauty of obsolete technology

I only found out that those handrails were designed by CST after I had finished my in-person reporting. I would have used them while I followed Jeff down to the first floor again, had I known. He gestured at the cordoned area to our right.

“Like I was saying last time I was here, they were working on the downstairs area, level one, the nature center,” Stanford said. “You can tell we are about 60% complete. A lot of the infrastructure is in place. Now that a lot of the concrete has been poured, it looks less like a construction site and more like an exhibit taking shape.”

The $13.5 million “Life” exhibit being built here — about $10 million of which comes from Orange County’s TDT reserves — is planned to open in spring 2024 once theming can be done and an animal collection built. Some critters are here already, but they’re under quarantine and getting used to the building. Much to take in.

Until Life opens, the first floor of the science center will continue to be altogether quieter than the rest, with its points of interest mostly behind walls along halls. A giant-screen theater, a workshop, office space, a preschool and two cafeterias are some of these places. But even once Life is finished and the sounds come back, the construction will stick around, or may at least return after a potential hiatus. The next phase of the Unlock Science campaign calls for a complete, $5 million renovation of the Dr. Phillips Cinedome theater, allowing it to go digital, according to Stanford.

“The theater opened with this building in February ‘97. At that time, there were two companies competing in the giant-screen film industry. There was iWERKS and there was IMAX. Roughly similar technology, but we went with an iWERKS theater,” he said. “Over the years, IMAX just kind of dominated the industry. iWERKS is no longer a competitor. I don’t even think iWERKS is in the giant-screen film business anymore.”

Now, I thought it was kind of cheeky how IMAX Corp. gave the science center an award for “Outstanding New Dome Theater” in 1997.

The leftmost giant cylindrical shape that you see driving east on Princeton is this theater, by the way, and the smaller one you see driving west is the Digital Adventure Theater. The big one seats more than 300 people. An eight-story tall screen formed to fit into this four-story shape creates a sort of illusion, getting nods from most I ask that standing and fixing your posture in the upper rows feels like you’re falling forward a little.

The small one seats about 200 people at a modest stage, where I once sang a U2 song by myself for Otronicon karaoke when I was 13.

The iWERKS technology we’re talking about is almost obsolete, Stanford described. Besides how its film prints have become commission-only — this film being the size of a post card, each frame — Jeff says that the science center brings in freelancers to keep it running and healthy with custom-made parts.

Behind the glass protecting the iWERKS system, I now didn’t know if I was looking at a projector, a time capsule or a classic car, but there it was. Someone in shorts was likely preparing “Cuba” for its 1:30 p.m. showing, and in what Stanford estimates to be at least a few years, it will be gone, replaced.

They’re still in the middle of fundraising, but for any iWERKS fixators out there, it’s your turn to get some nostalgic closure and stretch the time compression a smidgen.

“What you’re looking at is, when you come into the theater, the dome surrounds you, so the images surround you, the sounds surround you. It is an immersive experience and these theaters are ideal for films that transport you to places you don’t normally go, the top of Mount Everest, the bottom of the ocean, the surface of the moon. So it’s a great opportunity for fans of the medium,” Stanford said, adding shows are included with OSC admission. “It’s a great part of your museum experience to be able to come and take 40 minutes off the exhibit floor to be enveloped in these images and sound and to be transported somewhere special. It’s a very unique opportunity.”

Classrooms and carpets

HHCP lists the Orlando Science Center in its portfolio as a Government and Civics project. Jeff agreed with me that the classrooms on the second floor must have something to do with that.

He described the building like an intersection. Not flat like one, but as an intersection of culture and community. People come here to have fun, to learn and teach, even to get married. Money flows in to the nonprofit from donations, attendance, government grants, birthday parties and so on. It’s more like a science cathedral if you ask me.

The classrooms are through the Clubhouse, or the westernmost cafeteria, and up some stairs. Right outside is the bus loop that CST helped design.

There’s a translucent panel in back of the Clubhouse that used to protect a mannequin dressed up as an electrician. It was faced away from you, working on some big entangled panel, but that was from my days at camp here. This room is where those birthday parties take place, in addition to my former heightened Swiss roll consumption as a youngin’. The electrician is now gone.

When I asked what had happened to it, Jeff remarked that I was an astute guest for even remembering. I was about to really prove it.

“There’s something I was wondering, and we can come back to it potentially, but just, what happened to the carpet?” I asked.

I explained that I was referring to the science center’s old carpet, from that same time period as the Swiss rolls. Years ago.

Compared to the distance and void of the ceiling, which I’ll note I also enjoyed as a kid, it presented color and anticipation to the little me. The pattern, on a blue-ish purple background, was comprised of squiggly yellow rectangles and green circles with red and purple triangles throughout the interspace. Whatever this was, it likely served as a gateway for my appreciation of Memphis Design.

I can’t even rationally explain or demonstrate how fond I am for the pattern without pointing out I once recreated it in Animal Crossing and tweeted a screenshot at the science center to see if someone there would think that was neat. I didn’t hear back.

I hate to say it, but although a great job was done installing the current carpet, it reminds me of a community college. Jeff said the old one just had to go, though.

“It was, well, wear and tear. Just 25 years of 1,000 people a day. It’s just carpet,” he said. “Sustainability is a big concern, just being able to keep up with the wear and tear.”

That was my answer, anyway. I asked for it. Not only that, but the new carpet is one of those modular installs that’s done one square at a time. Maintenance as easy as peeling up a few pieces and replacing them. It’ll be there forever.

Up the stairs we went. Now in the hallway with the classrooms, we could get back to talking about the importance of what’s literally going on behind the scenes at the Orlando Science Center, some serious learning.

“We’re in the STEM Discovery Center, which is where we do school field trips. We just wrapped up summer camp. This is the headquarters of the Education Team,” he said, pointing at different windows and doors.

“There are really kind of two different science centers. There is one that is front-facing, which is for tourists and residents who are coming for a day to engage and to engage individuals and families in exploration, hands-on STEM learning, but for a day,” he said. “Then there’s the other Orlando Science Center, which is behind the scenes, which works with students and teachers and government and industry and supplements STEM learning curriculum in the school system. It helps industry, encourages STEM careers in the next generation, helps our teachers be able to make the STEM content come alive in their classrooms and gives them access to resources and training to be more confident in teaching.”

Jeff and I passed groups of team members in some of these rooms, gathered for post-summer debriefings. Many, he said, were involved in off-site programs which we’ve reported on before. The idea of sending science center resources on the road is no new idea though, and we’ll do a history lesson later, but it actually dates back to the ‘50s. Otherwise, the team members in the class behind the glass were getting ready for another school year.

Another door would let us in another stairwell with yet another office-lined hall attached, but while what I saw next surprised me at the time, I feel now that Jeff probably led me to that landing on purpose.

“There’s your original carpet all right,” he said.

And there it was, no more than about a cubicle’s-worth of it way in back of the place. Exquisite.

It’s strange to see something that you think doesn’t exist. At times like these, I usually reflect on when I first visited that “Avatar” land in Animal Kingdom. It’s filled with alien plants that I know full well are props, but the Imagineers did such a good job with the landscaping out there that it all just seems sort of natural, if that makes sense. It can be difficult in some spots, and especially so at a distance, to discern what plants are real or fake, so my brain accepted most of it at face value. No butterflies in my stomach, no oohs or ahhs, because I felt like I was just looking at plants; despite how the plants shouldn’t exist, they were still there, so that was that.

Here in the stairwell, this pattern that’s been slowly disorganizing in my mind — an old memory crushed, perhaps compressed, under the weight of new ones — reformed itself in an instant. Though truly as beaten up as Jeff had described, it has never been clearer. The shapes were smaller than I remembered, what I thought were purple triangles are closer to black, the yellow lines aren’t squiggly at all.

I took several pictures, which I felt like I had to do. It’s not like I could roll it up and take it with me. But it was good to see it again, it’s good to know it’s still somewhere.

Façades, fingernails and fundamental change

Exiting the next hallway brought us out alongside the largest of both second-floor showrooms. This small part of the traveling exhibit hall is sort of in the outer rim of places nonemployees aren’t allowed, so you could hear guests and the activities they were messing with, but the space we were in was empty; a dark blue passage that cuts left with an open ceiling, some spotlights above and another glass-clad office on our port side. Outside, a coffee shop, bathrooms and the entrance to the Digital Adventure Theater.

We were soon back in the crowd, somewhere between the traveling exhibit hall and one of those handrails. That area becomes “Kinetic Zone” between said traveling exhibits, a 3,000-square-foot layout that incorporates many of the smaller hands-on activities you would otherwise see on each floor. Jeff spoke highly of the San Francisco Exploratorium in this regard, a science center that he says has been an industry leader, in part through the development of a modular kiosk-style activities system. Here though, some of the interactives are new and others are as old as the building. There’s laser harp, for instance, that I was once half the size of. I think I could jump through it.

All attractions have a lifespan, Stanford said, both the permanent ones and those on rollers, relative to the museum’s growth.

“We had the Math Avenue, we had the Science Park, we had the Body Zone, you had NatureWorks, you had KidsTown, you had the Hollywood Science, you had the Cosmic Tourist — which was Earth and space science — you had all those exhibits that have been, for the most part, either retired or reinvented,” said Stanford, adding the cypress tree in the middle of the building is the largest permanent exhibit remaining from 1997, not wasting the opportunity to make an “evergreen” pun.

These earliest halls and exhibits at Orlando Science Center were developed by an in-house design team if they were feasible enough, with an outside design firm brought in for projects more the scale of Life, which Ohio-based Roto is helping out with, according to Stanford.

In a statement, Roto Partner Sean Ramsay lauded the Orlando Science Center as among the first to prioritize new experiences for younger audiences.

The Orlando Science Center has proven themselves to be at the forefront of innovation in the field. They were one of the first Science Centers who truly recognized the importance of the young family audience and addressed their specific needs with a major investment in their Kidstown gallery. Now they are expanding the diversity of their offerings once again by including a wholly renovated and expanded Life gallery featuring three dynamic ecosystems - the Reef, the Swamp, and the Rainforest - complete with live animals, plants, and integrated science experiences that allow visitors to explore a host of subjects from ecology to evolutionary adaptation to resource conservation.

JoAnn (Newman), Brandan (Lanman) and the whole OSC team have shown the type of vision, risk taking, and years long dedication it takes to pull off these types of world class experiences and they are among our favorite partners to work with.

Sean Ramsay | partner, Roto

I could go on about any of the old exhibits — Math Avenue’s chessboard, Science Park’s power plant, Body Zone’s gigantic set pieces, Hollywood Science’s fluorescent scorpions, Cosmic Tourist’s earthquake room — but KidsTown is the only place I really got to see one last time.

On June 6, 2019, the science center briefly went on lockdown due to police activity said to be nearby. I was still reporting at the time and volunteered to go bring a story back, feeling some urge to protect the place from the ugliness of the outside world, but the lockdown was already lifted when I got there. Meeting Jeff, I recall he let me know there was never really any danger and what occurred was precautionary. I got my quotes, but seeing as it was a dark and rainy day outside, I figured I would also ask if I could spend some time in the empty old KidsTown.

Jeff agreed to chaperone me around, to my surprise. I thought about how I used to see it as a place made just for me, how I was obsessed with stuff like that, like tiny shopping carts at commercial grocery stores and Fisher-Price kitchenettes. The Great Explorations Children’s Museum in St. Petersburg has a terrific miniature Publix, for example.

For purposes of remembering the architecture, the things I used to do and so on, I got some video of the walkthrough, closed captions included:

According to Jeff, things really began to change for the science center — and changes in general started to become more necessary — when “Our Body: The Universe Within” came to town in 2006, an expansive and thought-provoking display of humans donated to science. Even I visited at the time, it’s quite unforgettable.

“It was really the exhibit that got people talking about the science center again, that got people coming to the site. More than just, you know, members, or people who have great affection from having grown up here, but people who hadn’t come in a while or had never come,” Stanford said. “It got people thinking of the Orlando Science Center as a place where they can go to really experience science and have discussions about how science impacts our world. We’ve really grown from that. That was 2006, and so I really feel that was a turning point for the museum at that time.”

We can roughly measure that growth by looking ten years ahead at the opening of the new KidsTown in 2016, another part of the Unlock Science campaign. The old KidsTown remained upright until 2022, when it and NatureWorks were cleared to make way for Life.

Turning to those exhibits on rollers, several remain in the current Our Planet hall. Many of them called the old Cosmic Tourist exhibit their home, such as a gravity well, cross-section models of volcanoes, a tornado machine and that earthquake room I mentioned, she’s still kickin’. The most notorious, if you could call it that, is associated with what I’ve always referred to as “The Fingernail,” a very fingernail-like object sealed in a blue soap solution that’s been spinning around, simulating a hurricane, for the better part of 30 years. I only say “fingernail-like” because, until my walkabout with Jeff, I was convinced it was the real thing.

“That’s kind of an urban legend,” Stanford said. “My understanding is, it’s a piece of Plexi, like a strip of Plexi that’s in the mix, and it just looks like a fingernail. It’s kind of like our version of a hidden mickey.”

Another mystery solved.

As far as how these very few exhibits have stood the test of time — the earthquake room alone barely shakes anymore, but don’t tell Jeff I said that, frankly I’d like it to either stick around or end up in my living room — Stanford chalked it up to an “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” reasoning.

“Good exhibits will hold up because, these concepts, you can explain science very simply, and when you can do that, those are the exhibits that will survive,” he said.

So, what makes a given exhibit dated?

Stanford earlier in the day pointed to Hollywood Science as a chief example of dated exhibits. As we remembered it, Hollywood Science was a showcase of CRT-era technology. Flat screens, really new technology in general, was just something that OSC had to embrace.

“Film technology of the ‘80s and ‘90s, it became a history exhibit pretty quickly,” Stanford said, adding technology is looked at now as a way to support experiences rather than constitute them, such as with touch screens that can handle thousands of guests per day.

But let’s look at the whole place as a history exhibit briefly, it’s well past time I should have worked in these details organically.

Before moving into what’s now Orlando Shakes in 1960, the science center was incorporated in 1955 to drum up enthusiasm at the dawn of the Space Race. I asked if the government had any hand in that, Jeff said it did not.

“It was volunteer-run. It was just a group of very passionate volunteers, and what they did was, it was called ‘Museum on the Move.’ They took a lot of science experiments and hands-on exhibits and they took them to schools, they took them to libraries, they took them to empty storefronts, bank lobbies, just wherever they could engage the public,” Stanford said.

The time between 1955 and 1960 was spent raising money for OSC’s first permanent home, soon operating as “Orlando Science Museum” and even “John Young Museum and Planetarium.”

“Orlando Science Center” was coined in the early ‘90s, several years before the second move.

These days, much of the museum’s revenue comes from booked events. This was something Jeff and I discussed in the Dino Digs exhibit, which opened in summer 2001 after Animal Kingdom donated much of the fossil collection that’s still there.

Could the science center receive anything from Dinoland, once that’s gone? Who knows. Regardless, Dino Digs is the space that Body Zone used to live in, and it’s now used for many of those big rental events.

“We are standing in probably the prime event space where we can rent this our for private parties — corporate events, weddings, bar mitzvahs — and that talks about a very essential part of revenue generation for the museum, because no museum is going to survive on tickets alone,” Stanford said. “You need to do what you can to keep the doors open and funding for the museum comes from many different places, but how I like to describe it is ‘mission enabling,’ and yes, the rental business is very ‘mission enabling.’”

Given the necessity of this revenue stream, I had to ask how OSC was doing financially. Jeff said it’s doing very well.

“We are in a much better place than, say, we were 20 years ago. We’ve had our fair share of struggles in the past, but we are in a much better place. We are sustainable,” he replied.

Life, work

It was time for Jeff and I to join Brandan Lanman, vice president of Visitor Experience at Orlando Science Center, for a tour of the Life exhibit in its current state, as well as for a peek into the science center’s workshop elsewhere on level one.

What’s now a construction barrier near the elevator will soon be a choice point where guests can branch off into one of three major ecosystems, Lanman described.

“One represents the Florida ecosystem, it’ll be affectionately known as the swamp. That’s sort of a play off of the original space that we had with the center cypress swamp at the middle of our building,” he said, reassuring me that a broken branch on the fiberglass tree would be repaired and the whole thing cleaned. “Then, you can choose to go to the ocean. It focuses mainly on the Caribbean but it does have some other extensions from there, just to kind of touch on the overall oceans as well, and then one of the bigger, massive parts of the project is the space that used to be our KidsTown (...) that is our walk-through aviary and tropical rainforest space.”

Brandan and I stepped down into the rain forest enclosure as Jeff stayed at a height closer to where guests will soon meander on a walkway. Some trees have already been installed down here — these being real, specially grown and treated for animal habitats as opposed to the old fiberglass set pieces — but that walkway and a rock feature are still in the mail. There was at least a small model left behind of what the rocks would eventually look like, Lanman held it for a moment.

I asked about the superstructure and learned that the pillar centered in the following photo was what once supported the yarn-covered Story Tree. I observed this pillar and rationalized that I was looking at the next 30 years in utero. That’s how long Jeff and Brandan expect Life to last at the very least, anyway.

“This will be for the red-footed tortoises, back here and over there, and then we have a small rodent from the Amazon named an agouti which will get this space back here, there’ll be a perch for a series of parrots and conures,” said Lanman, doing more pointing around where the old KidsTown sewer and orange grove used to be.

There will be some monkeys living at the science center, and Memphis the Skunk will remain as well, but we’re told Memphis still won’t be in a guest-facing enclosure. He explained this as we walked into the back-of-house area, the former gopher tortoise habitat and beehive from NatureWorks. Next up was the ocean space.

“The ramp is about half of the original ramp that was used to be here, part of it is a newly-poured ramp. We did relocate our reef, so you might recall the reef used to be in the back corner, that has been re-done and that is now going to be a touch-tank exhibition of the Indian River Lagoon,” Lanman said. “Our new coral reef will be specialty for bonnethead sharks. That column (in the middle of the shark tank) used to be exactly where the sinkhole was. You’d have to pass that column to go into the back-of-house area for the old NatureWorks.”

I’ll note here that no shark touching is going to be done once Life is open, as Lanman was talking about two separate tanks. Guests will enter the ocean area walking between them.

The ocean section is getting a custom soundscape and a translucent, deep-sea film on the bay windows to add to the immersion, what Lanman said would end up being one of the more thematic places to be at OSC. Currently, rock work is already underway here.

Everything’s still on time and on budget for Life, Lanman said. Though the original plan as of 2019 was for a 2021 opening, most of the new animals are set to start moving in by the end of 2023. In addition to those already mentioned, Orlando Science Center hopes to take in such creatures as burrowing owls, eastern box turtles and even some squirrels to run through clear pipes above the swamp section. The gopher tortoises, however, have been there all along, and what was once a single crowded basking rock for the turtles and alligators swimming near the tree will become three rocks, plenty of reptile-sunning space.

According to Lanman, the science center with Life hopes to gain accreditation through the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, becoming a zoo-museum hybrid.

“There’s some real problems in our world that we just want to bring attention to in the way that we can do it, climate change and conservation issues are really a major focus,” he said. “We want to ultimately bring some attention to these things locally, we have an impact on this, we can show that and share that. If the animals can help do that and create some change, that’s a great opportunity to work together and try to make some things better for all of us, the animals and ourselves.”

On our way to the workshop — aka the “Fab Lab,” located far behind locked double doors near the guest cafeteria — we passed the Orlando Science Center’s preschool. It’s fully accredited, with at least 60 kids ages 3 to 5 currently enrolled, Jeff said. An intersection of culture and community.

Overseen by Doug Johnson, director of Design and Production, the workshop was about the size of a house. I was told I may have been the first media allowed there.

Currently in the oven were several 3D-printed planets, destined for display in the Our Planet hall. Those take a week to print in full, Lanman said. Some other exhibits were undergoing maintenance, such as a prototype of a wooden catapult, a vortex tube that he pointed out would soon be replacing something else and so on

“The guys left us a few things behind just to kind of take a look,” Lanman said. “The team has really honed their skills on a lot of the newer technologies around fabrication, all kinds of capabilities from fiberglass, 3D printing, metals we obviously do. It’s a pretty comprehensive woodworking shop as well.”

Many things that I and others loved about the old science center came from this room, with its knick knacks everywhere, traces of sawdust still lingering in places, a Tool poster on the wall. I pointed to an old clock with many old volunteers’ names on the rim, but Jeff said he only recognized one of them, someone named Garth. While I thought I would see more retired exhibits here, I was informed the vast majority are kept far away from the public eye, somewhere on the fifth floor.

Regardless, what happens in the workshop is funded by the science center’s project reserve, what Jeff described as dollars set aside to keep the small stuff fresh, scooting it around the big projects.

But again, it’s been here the whole time, even when Jeff was closer to my age.

“I went to camp here as a kid, back when it was where Shakes is now. I went to laser light shows in high school, in college, over at Shakes. I got married here, or I had my reception here. My son has grown up here, there are staff that know my son better than they know me,” Jeff said, walking me out.

On the way, he told me that the light feature above the second-floor lobby actually spells out two quotes, in braille, from Edwin Hubble and Bill Nye respectively. I still haven’t been able to decipher them from my pictures.

An employee break room interrupted the last walk, though. My phone had died at this point and I wasn’t about to use a charger at one of the vacant workshop desks, so I asked Jeff to take some pictures of posters on the wall. They were collages of OSC through the decades, and you have no idea how difficult it is trying to track down pictures of the original science center, these are the clearest I’ve seen.

As he was getting those pictures for me, I looked around. Two tables in here, some chairs, two microwaves just like we have at News 6.

On the wall opposite from the posters, a small sheet of paper with instructions of what to do during an emergency, an active shooter drill. That ugliness of the outside world again.

The science center on Oct. 1 plans to welcome the traveling exhibit “Backyard Adventures” to level two, in that area with the open hallway I mentioned. Guests are invited to enjoy the Australian-made exhibit from the perspective of a bee, exploring a digital garden to learn about the flora and fauna abound. That experience will be sticking around until Jan. 9, 2024.

Any suggestions for another article I could write about a local place that residents know and love? Contact me at bfhogan@wkmg.com.

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