Neenah Historical Society

05/29/2026

Spend Sunday, May 31st from 11am-3pm at our Family Day! This free come-and-go event allows you weekend entry to the historic Octagon House, where you can see the Growing Up Neenah Exhibit, hands-on interaction with historic objects, and a chance to play some historic games. This is also your chance to catch a glimpse of vintage vehicles. Hope to see you there!

05/26/2026

The Museum Passport Program has officially begun!

Stop by any participating locations to get started. Once you get at least 4 locations stamped, enter to win the grand prize!

For additional information and to download your own copy of the passport, visit our event page: https://www.neenahhistoricalsociety.com/programs-events/2026/5/26/museum-passport-2026

See you soon!

05/22/2026

On Thursday, May 21, 2026, the Neenah Historical Society hosted fifth graders from Neenah Lutheran for an end-of-year field trip! They walked through the exhibit and played with stilts, hoops and graces, and a simplified version of 9-pin. Thanks for visiting! And please, come again!

05/21/2026

The Neenah Historical Society will be closed on May 25, 2026, in honor of Memorial Day.
📸From our Flickr: Memorial Day parade on May 30, 1942.

05/15/2026

On the Northwest Corner of Isabella St and Adams St sits the Lincoln Manor Apartments. They adopted the Lincoln name in honor of the school that used to stand there.
The Lincoln School, originally known as the Second Ward School, opened in 1893 for $15,000. The first principal was Mrs. Isa LeTourneux. It operated as a school until it closed in 1969 due to high costs of updating the building for current safety standards. Several plans for the building were tossed around, but the building and land were sold to George Cowling who decided to demolish the building and construct a 16-unit apartment complex in 1971.
📸From our Flickr: From the Munroe Studios photograph collection. Reproduction done in 1982. 2nd Ward School circa 1898.

05/15/2026

Did you miss the last Neenah Historical Society's Library Presentation on Neenah Sports: Big Wins and Losses? Great news! It is now on our YouTube Channel!

Buzzer beaters, upsets, record breaking seasons… Join local historian Kara Rothkegel as she highlights some of the biggest wins and losses from Neenah Rocket...

05/11/2026

Did you know that, until the 1960s, international racing standards required cars to have a designated color for the country they originated in? An Italian Ferrari like the one pictured here would have been red. Green was for Great Britain. White/silver was for Germany. Blue was France. Blue with white stripes or white with blue stripes was for the USA.

📸From our Flickr: From the Munroe Studios photograph collection in 1952. Jim Kimberly (No. 5) racing his Ferrari 225 S at an unidentified location. Possibly at Elkhart Lake, per Andrew Miller.

05/08/2026

The Castle on Commercial Street
Scooper's Ice Cream Parlor showed up at 200 S Commercial Street in July of 1976. Unfortunately, it did not last long. In 1978 it gets remodeled and turned into a Waffle House. Did you ever visit Scooper's?

📸From the Munroe Studios photograph collection in 1977. Scoopers at night.

05/04/2026

Fishing season officially opened this weekend, and Neenah’s shorelines have started to see all the people and poles come back out. With the water levels still high, please be safe and have a great catch!

📸From Flickr: Lilburn Dehut lands a sheepshead below the dam at Island Park in 1986.

05/01/2026

Our intern Maddie is wrapping up her time with us by digitizing a handwritten copy of an 1877 City of Neenah Directory. She found the small notebook while working on our archival rehousing project. While we do not have an official copy of the directory to verify the work, the owner of the neat penmanship copied other works flawlessly. Using our new CZUR Shine Ultra allows us to scan both pages at once, turn the files into various formats like pdfs and jpgs, and we can work on transcribing the cursive for quick searches to help genealogists with their research and us with our knowledge of early Neenah residents! We are also looking into ways to have this available online for researchers unable to make it to our office.

Edit to clarify: the 1877 directory our person copies comes from the History of Neenah, written by GA Cunningham, and not a separate entity.

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