Tinker Swiss Cottage No. 2 in ‘This Place Matters’ voting

From press release

Tinker Swiss Cottage Museum and Gardens is No. 2 in the ranking midway through the voting that ends Sept. 15 for the “This Place Matters” $25,000 Community Challenge.

The competition, sponsored by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, began Sunday, Aug. 15, and ends Wednesday, Sept. 15. Votes are cast online by visiting the “hot link” at http://bit.ly/ahoqxk to go directly to the Tinker voting page. Or, go to http://www.preservationnation.org, then click on “This Place Matters,” and click on “Community Map” and click on the location icon in northern Illinois for Tinker Swiss Cottage Museum and Gardens. This will take you to the Tinker webpage, where you can read information about Tinker and place a vote. Only one vote per person, per screen name is permitted, so send the link to family and friends and encourage them to vote for Tinker.

Tinker’s entry is sponsored by the Friends of Tinker, the museum’s new support and membership organization. It is hoped participation in this competition and the attention it will focus on Tinker will spark interest in a museum membership drive to be conducted this fall.

Other sites in the competition include historic churches, theaters, downtown districts and dwellings. Voters can cast just one ballot in the competition.

“It will take the whole community pulling for Tinker and voting for Tinker to put us over the top in this popularity contest,” Little said. “But I know we can do it.”

The Tinker website includes a Tinker’s Top 10 list of reasons the museum is important. It is accompanied by a photo of a large group of Tinker supporters standing on the suspension bridge at Tinker, holding This Place Matters signs.

The This Place Matters Community Challenge program is the second This Place Matters annual campaign conducted by the National Trust. It is made possible by support from Fireman’s Fund Insurance Company and National Trust Insurance Services, LLC.

Tinker Swiss Cottage Museum and Gardens, a Rockford Park District affiliate, is an educational, not-for-profit institution, dedicated to the preservation of and access to historic Tinker Swiss Cottage, its collections and the legacy of the Robert H. Tinker family for the community-at-large.

Tinker is at 411 Kent St., Rockford. For more information about the programs and tours offered by Tinker Swiss Cottage Museum and Gardens, call (815) 964-2424 or e-mail bbroyles@tinkercottage.org. Visit the museum’s website at tinkercottage.org to learn more about events and activities that will take place at Tinker this year.

From the Sept. 8-14, 2010 issue