To say Walter Mayer was immersed in the past is an understatement.
He oversaw some 90,000 to 100,000 artifacts at the Buffalo Museum of History for three decades.
Among them: A Bell rocket engine. The gun, and handkerchief hidden over it, that Leon Czolgosz used to assassinate President William McKinley on the grounds of the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo in 1901. And a model of the Electric Tower from the same Exposition, used by railroads to promote package tours to Buffalo’s World’s Fair.
Mayer, the senior director of museum collections, retired Friday, ending a 32-year career.
Michelle Harris, former executive director of the Niagara Falls Public Library, succeeds him.
“I really can’t say there was a day I woke up and said I just don’t want to go to work today,” the 72-year-old Mayer said last week.
“If you’re not bogged down with paperwork, and you’re actually working with the collection, you’re going to learn something new,” Mayer said. “There’s not a day that goes by when I don’t.”
Mayer has been an incalculable font of knowledge at the museum, Executive Director Melissa Brown said.
“Across three decades, Walt served as a steady force shaping the museum,” Brown said. “We have a common in-house refrain, ‘Just ask Walt.’
“He knows this collection like no other,” she said. “The American Alliance of Museum accreditations, countless jaunts to local homes to consider donations, curatorial contributions to every major exhibit, diligent management of the systems and facilities that house our regional treasures – it is impossible to summarize his impact. We will work now to build upon his legacy.”
Mayer worked in the museum’s Resource Center on Forest Avenue, a repository for the museum’s three-dimensional objects. For years, a 30-foot-tall plaster replica made from foam blocks of a female figure associated with the exposition’s Dreamland exhibit stood near the entrance.
Mayer’s fascination with the museum’s collection was…
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