For years people have been decrying the conditions under which the relics and archives are kept in the current visitor's center. The current VC is a hodgepodge of add ons to the original Rosensteel home, which was doneted, complete with its collection of artifacts and documents from the battle, to the NPS in the early 1960s.Duly noted. You ask questions, you get answers. Internet = good.
The building is old, sees the traffic from millions of visitors every year, and leaks like a seive. If those artifacts and archives are to be saved, they need a new home. Hence the new visitor's center. That need, along with the five year plan to restore much of the battlefield to its original condition allowed the NPS to make the plans for the new visitor's center big enough to house the collections, administrative offices, Cyclorama painting, museum, bookstore, cafeteria, and electric map. It also allowed them to get the current building and its neighbor, the Cyclorama center (that hasn't worked since right after it opened), and remove them, and their parking lots from the area of Zeigler's Grove, a very important area of the battle.
The new VC will go down in the hollow where the ponds were at the old Fantasyland Amusement Park south of Hunt Avenue between Taneytown Road and Baltimore avenue. A new entrance road will be cut off Baltimore south Kinzie's knoll.
The new VC is NOT superfluous, Dimitri, and frankly, I resent your characterization of it as such.
I will be circling back to address the Park Service's $49 million maintenance deficit, in a future post.
