The Wayne State College Department of Art and Design and the Service-Learning Program have been requested by city administrator Lowell Johnson to restore historic photos of the town of Wayne.

Wayne city officials discovered that original prints from throughout the twentieth century, and as recent as the 1980s, had not been taken care of and therefore were damaged. Only a few photographs remained, surviving by way of the newspaper archives. This is when Johnson decided to take action.

Eighty-nine students participated in the restoration project, which was led by Lisa Nelson and Joshua Piersanti. The project took four semesters to complete, and the group produced many photographs of various buildings and scenes in Wayne.

The photos include one large panoramic of the city, and two large panoramics of the college. Some of the restored photographs are to be placed in city buildings.

Dave Graber, director of Conn Library, and Marcus Schlichter, librarian-acquisitions and archivist at WSC, provided another parallel project for the students.

They had in their possession a collection of historic photographs of WSC, which students also had the opportunity to restore. The photos pictured the college around the time of its beginning.

These projects were completed as a part of WSC’s Service-Learning Program, and not only benefitted the city and community of Wayne, but also gave students training in the area of photo restoration.

“The goal of every service-learning project is to meet a need in the community while providing an enhanced learning environment for WSC students,” Service-Learning coordinator Nelson said.

Institutional funding provides support for Service-Learning, and this funding was used to pay for professional matting and framing of the photos, to allow them to be put up around the city.

The restored photos will be on display in the Nordstrand Visual Arts Gallery from Oct. 3 through Oct. 16. An opening reception will take place on Oct. 3 from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m.