One thing the society does not have is one of the electric chairs from the famous limestone Joliet Correctional Center on Collins Street. If secured, exhibit designers are considering housing it within a miniature recreation of one of the prison towers on the first floor of the museum's core exhibit. Even if the lethal device is available, Ueland said, the museum's design committee has not settled on whether or not to use it, although there will still probably be a recreation of the prison tower. It will be done in a respectful manner. Visitors will enter the museum through the newly constructed Route 66 Visitors Center, which will adjoin the Renaissance Center and the old Ottawa Street Methodist Church, where the museum will be housed.
People find that useful.
The canal cut, complete with mannequins posing as laborers, will stretch most of the first floor of what is now the sanctuary of church, right down what used to be the main aisle between pews. After getting through the canal, visitors are encouraged to circle the main room clockwise as Joliet's history moves from the days of the early settlers to the present. The core exhibit will be housed completely in the main sanctuary room and its mezzanine levels. Writer Avi Decter, who also did the concept sketches for the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., is overseeing the planning, Ueland said. The plans call for two bridges to extend from the mezzanine at the back of the sanctuary through to the second floor that's behind the front wall, in effect creating a second-floor ring around the sanctuary floor.