It has been 16 years in the making, but a series of plaques telling of Malta’s history are up at the Malta gazebo adjacent to the Shops at Malta. The exhibit officially opened with a Thursday, June 5, ceremony led by Town Historian Teri Gay, who spearheaded the project.
The exhibit features nine plaques in all. Eight of them provide historic information on points of interest in the town with a focus on Malta Corners, also known as Dunning Street Corners. The land for a parade ground was donated by early settler Michael Dunning and became the town’s first designated historic district.
Visitors to the exhibit can work their way around the gazebo to catch a glimpse of Malta’s past. There is a plaque detailing the general history of Malta, followed by information on Dunning Street, Malta Corners, the Southeast Corner, the Parade Ground, the Southwest Corner, the Northwest Corner (where the gazebo is located) and the Northeast corner. The plaques are situated so that visitors face the general direction of the location as they read about it.
Also included is a plaque listing the town’s supervisors, all the way from its founding in 1802 to present Supervisor Paul Sausville. There are plenty of empty slots for the future.
Sausville was present to lend words of support on Thursday.
He said that the opening of the exhibit was a historic moment for the town, and emphasized the importance of keeping in touch with Malta’s history.
`As I came here today I came by the Dunning Street cemetery, and I pulled off and walked around,` said Sausville. `I wondered, ‘What were these people like?’We don’t know unless there’s a special person who can bring that to life. That’s what Teri has done.`
The opening of the exhibit will be one of Teri Gay’s last actions as the Town of Malta historian. She has elected to resign the position, which she has held for four years, in order to spend more time with her family and to pursue her writing.
`It’s great to be going out with this under my belt,` said Gay. `The project is very near and dear to me.`
The plaques have some history of their own. Groundwork for the exhibit was laid in the 1990s, when the Nigro Companies submitted a Planned Development District document for construction at the Shops at Malta. The PDD included plans for the gazebo and plaques as a gift to the town, but the plaques were never built or installed.
`It sort of fell by the wayside, and I think people forgot about it, quite frankly,` said Gay.
She stumbled across the legislation when researching the Shops at Malta, and decided to pick the project back up.
`It was just kind of there waiting for somebody to do it,` she said.
Gay wrote the text and chose the images for the plaques, and it took about a year to get to the final product. Now that the exhibit is finished, it will be a reminder of the past for a town that is rapidly changing.
`It was a wonderful time to do it to because of what’s happening in our downtown area,` said Gay. `When I am writing about Malta, I am fond of writing ‘Come to Malta, where history meets the future.’ Malta will always be a place where history holds importance.“