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Updated 02/28/2013 05:00 PM

Walter Elwood Museum finally finds new home

It's been more than a year-and-a-half since Tropical Storm Irene forced the Walter Elwood Museum to close. But as YNN's Maria Valvanis explains, the Amsterdam landmark finally has a massive new place to call home.

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AMSTERDAM, N.Y. -- Museum Director Ann Peconie said, "Obviously when you're a museum, you want a historical building, you want a building that's on a main drag and you want exposure."

The Walter Elwood museum got all that and a lot more.

"The freight elevator is down in our basement. It has two leather belts that controls it, it's from probably the late 1800s. It's a little artifact that comes with the building," said Peconie.

Wing after wing, room after room and possibility after possibility.

Peconie said, "We have an enormous, tremendous amount of space. We're excited about the possibilities of having a museum kind of within an arts cultural historical center."

Volunteers are helping to clean up the 96,000 square foot building to help make the dream a reality. Exhibits will fill the downstairs, a kids center will take up one massive room upstairs, while the rest could be up to your imagination.

"From art classes all the way to yoga classes, to Pilate classes, we have room for everything, besides small businesses that need small offices for a short amount of time or long amount of time,” said Peconie.

The museum used to be inside the Guy Park Manor until the building and many of the artifacts were destroyed by Tropical Storm Irene. Peconie says flood damage isn't something to worry about at the museum's new home.

"It's going to really be the safest and best place the collection has ever been stored."

Peconie hopes to have part of that collection on exhibit by this summer.