The Fort St. Joseph Museum and Chapin Mansion complex will now be known as the Niles History Center.

Carol Bainbridge, museum director, announced the new name and unveiled a new logo for the history center during a press conference Tuesday afternoon at the Fort St. Joseph Museum.

Eric Hanley, a Lake Michigan College student from St. Joseph, designed the new logo.

Hanley and fellow classmates in LMC’s graphic design department created logos for a class assignment. His was chosen the best among them.

“I am just super excited and flabbergasted that my design was chosen,” Hanley said.

A lamp in the Chapin Mansion inspired Hanley’s design.

“I saw the lamp, and it was just so ornate,” he said.

Brandon Pierce, graphic design instructor, said creating the logo was a challenging and rewarding project for his students.

“One thing very cool about Niles is there’s such a huge history going back so long here that there’s a lot of depth, a lot of stuff you can get into,” Pierce said.

Students toured the Chapin Mansion and Fort St. Joseph Museum to come up with a design. They took 150 photographs, did more than 220 pages of research, came up with 49 unique ideas and logged more than 28 hours of computer time.

“Doing this process isn’t just coming up here and drawing something and saying, ‘here’s a logo — I’m done.’ There’s a lot more to it,” said Kaitlyn West, LMC student. “I was just really fortunate to be able to work with this project and to experience something like this — it was absolutely wonderful.”

Bainbridge said it wasn’t easy to choose one project.

“They were all good choices,” she said.

Niles History Center will appear on a sign in front of the Chapin Mansion. Brian Thomas, owner of Heartwood Quality Woodworking, created the sign.

“It’s not a tricky name, but it works,” Bainbridge said.

Niles Center for History was also a consideration.

Residents can tour the Chapin Mansion, 508 E. Main St., during an open house from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday.