The Remnant Trust

Somewhat a Blast from the Past last week was the discovery of a display of artifacts from The Remnant Trust at the Columbia Club in Indianapolis. Their mission to preserve historic documents promoting individual liberty and human dignity led them to possess original copies of the Declaration of Independence and others even older, written by the likes of Isaac Newton and Aristotle.

In 2010, we met with the founder of The Remnant Trust, Brian Bex, to discuss an OrthoWorx project to house some of their documents in the former Billy Sunday Museum in Winona Lake. (Billy Sunday was a professional baseball player from the Warsaw area, turned evangelist.) OrthoWorx considered this project part of their effort to address the “trailing spouse” issue they had when attracting employees for the Warsaw Orthopedics industry. Executives being recruited to work in Warsaw reported pushback from their spouses who would rather live in a more urban environment with the associated amenities.

The existing building had a lot of rustic shiplap pine woodwork and didn’t have the feel they wanted for a scholarly museum. Office space was limited and the HVAC was inadequate. It also still had much of the Billy Sunday memorabilia in place. Despite all of this, the price was right and we were hired to implement the renovation. The plans for this renovation were completed by Scearce Rudisel Architects (now SRKM Architecture), under the direction of Mary Ellen Rudisel.

New lighting, office space and flooring were part of the overall renovation giving the space a more updated feel. Some of the woodwork was salvaged and relocated to keep the theme consistent. But the main focus was the vault.

The vault would be where the documents would be stored. Most of these would be stored on shelving in standard library manner, while others were placed in their own cases. It was designed to look unassuming, but that belied the underlying construction. Special effort was made to seal the space so that it was protected from the elements. Walls were steel stud construction with double layers of abuse resistant drywall. The door was designed to look like a standard door, but serve as a high security vault door with environmental seals. Special lighting was installed to assure that no detrimental affects to the documents would be caused. The space was also environmentally controlled by a redundant, high-end HVAC system with temperature control that would keep the vault within 1 degree of temperature set point and within 1 percent of humidity set point whether the vault was empty or occupied. Occupancy varied, since it was vacant the majority of the time, but also allowed for visiting scholars as well as school classes and the occasional Remnant Trust party of 30 or more.

One of the interesting tenets of The Remnant Trust is that these works, while revered, should be accessible. Visiting scholars could be seen wearing gloves and turning pages with microspatulas while visitors from the public are allowed to touch these documents, some many hundreds of years old.

Unfortunately, after a few years at this location, The Remnant Trust found a university benefactor and moved the collection to another location. Warsaw did not prove out to be the best location for visiting scholars and for sharing their collection. It’s a loss to our area. But seeing the smaller display in the Columbia Club reminded me of their work. You can make an appointment to for a private tour here, though it’s open to guests and members to walk through anytime.