Nonprofit Local History Museum Website Template
Rivertown
Rivertown is a small museum with a big subject, and the site is designed like its own exhibition labels: one strong photograph, a precise caption, and the facts a visitor needs set in a ruled strip. It should feel like a well-kept archive, not an attraction.
Starting at $500
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- Built for
- Paducah residents, school groups from western Kentucky, family historians, and travelers stopping between the interstate and the river
- Navigation
- Full-screen menu. Only a Menu button shows; it opens a full-screen index with large type. Keeps the first screen uncluttered.
Names, photos, times and stories in this template are sample content. Your version uses your own words, photos and branding.
Why it looks this way.
- Typography
Old Standard TT is a revival of the Modern serifs used in American books and newspapers in the 1870s and 80s, which is exactly when the warehouse was built. Libre Franklin, a Franklin Gothic revival, handles body text the way that face once handled railway and river-packet timetables. Courier Prime sets dates and catalog numbers like a typed accession card.
- Old Standard TT headlines
- Libre Franklin body text
- Courier Prime labels
- Color
The red is the oxide paint on old packet boats and the brick of Water Street; the blue-green is the Ohio on a clear day. The background is a cool gray taken from river fog rather than the beige of most history sites, and a fine grain sits over everything like the tooth of archival paper. Every pairing passes WCAG AA in both themes.
- Page
#E7E8E2 - Cards
#F4F4EF - Text
#1D1E1A - Brand
#7A2C22 - Accent
#2D6371
- Page
- Layout
A single Menu button opens a full-screen index of the seven pages in large type. Museum visitors usually come for one thing, today's hours or the flood, and the uncluttered first screen lets the photograph and its caption do the introducing.
Pages: Home, Visit, Exhibitions, The '37 flood, Field trips, Research room, Membership
- Hero
The photograph runs edge to edge with no words on it, and the headline sits underneath like a gallery caption, with place, date and photographer in a ruled strip above. It is how the museum labels its own objects, so the first screen behaves like the building.
- Calls to action
The main action is Hours & admission, because nearly every visitor arrives asking whether we are open. The others name specific outcomes: Book a class visit, Request a research hour, Become a member. The brackets around each button echo the square brackets archivists use for supplied information.
- Photography
Paducah streets, the river, the research room and the people who remember. We deliberately avoided generic grand museum halls: this is a two-storey warehouse with oak floors, and the photography should never promise marble.
- Accessibility
Generous body size, full-contrast captions, and an honest access section: the elevator, the hearing loop in the listening room, the bench in every gallery. The live open-or-closed status is written out in words as well as shown.
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