Blair County Historical Society [PA]

Description

The Blair County Historical Society seeks to preserve and share the history of Blair County, Pennsylvania. The society operates a museum with period rooms and exhibits on the early iron industry, transportation, medicine, military history, toys, geology, and education. The museum is housed in the Baker Mansion. This home was occupied by iron master Elias Baker and his family beginning circa 1836. Other sites operated by the society include the Royer Mansion, previously owned by another iron master; the Dick Schoolhouse; and Etna Furnace. The Blair County Historical Society holds a collection approaching 100,000 artifacts. The major period covered is 1850 through the 1920's. The collection includes a wide variety of items depicting everyday life, including clothing and accessories, furniture, household appliances, toys, china, ceramics and glassware, lighting devices, and tools. Other categories include firearms and military relics, medical tools and equipment, transportation artifacts, rocks and minerals, and material from local schools and businesses.

The society offers a traveling trunk focused on mid–19th–century daily life; Royer Mansion tours; Baker Mansion tours; a museum exhibits; research library; and archives.

Adams Museum and House [SD]

Description

The Adams Museum and House seeks to preserve and share the history of Deadwood, South Dakota and the surrounding Black Hills. The Adams Museum collections include folk art, Lakota artifacts, and Wild Bill Hickok's (1837-1876) gun, among other items. Other figures represented in the collections include Calamity Jane (1852-1903) and Deadwood Dick, a fictional character whose name was used by a variety of individuals. The Adams House is a 1892 Queen Anne Victorian, abandoned entirely furnished in 1934, which now functions as a circa 1900 house museum.

The museum offers three floors of exhibits and self-guided tours. The house offers period rooms and an orientation exhibit.

Gillette Castle State Park [CT]

Description

Atop the most southerly hill in a chain known as the Seven Sisters, William Hooker Gillette, noted actor, director, and playwright, built this 184-acre estate, the Seventh Sister. The focal point of his effort was a 24-room mansion reminiscent of a medieval castle.

A second website for the site, maintained by the Friends of Gillette Castle, can be found here.

The site offers tours and occasional recreational and educational events.

Gene Stratton-Porter State Historic Site [IN]

Description

The Gene Stratton-Porter State Historic Site is the second home of the Hoosier author and nature photographer Gene Stratton-Porter (1863–1924). The site presents information on her life and sources of inspiration; and currently encompasses 125 acres of land, 20 of which were part of Porter’s original property. "The Cabin in Wildflower Woods," designed by Porter and built in 1913, is a two-story cabin with exterior walls of Wisconsin cedar logs. Much of Porter's furniture and personal memorabilia, including her library, are preserved at the home. In her lifetime, Porter authored seven nature books, two books of poetry, children’s books, numerous magazine articles, and 12 novels, including Song of the Cardinal and Freckles. Her personal interest was in writing about nature. However, her romantic works were most commercially successful. Stratton-Porter and her daughter, Jeanette's, graves are also on site.

The site offers group tours in accordance with state educational standards, educational outreach programs, and educational materials for checkout.

Schroeder Saddletree Factory Museum [IN]

Description

For 94 years, workers at the Ben Schroeder Saddletree Company crafted tens of thousands of wooden frames for saddle makers throughout the United States and Latin America. It was the nation's longest lasting, continually operated, family-owned saddletree company. John Benedict "Ben" Schroeder, a German immigrant, started his business in a small brick workshop in 1878, though it grew to include a woodworking shop, boiler room and engine shed, a sawmill, a blacksmith shop, an assembly room, the family residence, and several outbuildings. After his death, Ben's family kept his dream alive by adding stirrups, hames for horse collars, clothespins, lawn furniture, and even work gloves to their line of saddletrees. The factory closed in 1972 and was left completely intact. Recognized by historians as one of America's premier industrial heritage sites, the Schroeder Saddletree factory has been restored to allow visitors to Madison to tour through this vintage workplace. Belts turn and the original antique woodworking machines spin into action. Sawdust is whisked from machines into the boiler room, where it once fueled the steam boiler that powered the equipment. Saddletree patterns hang, cobweb covered, from the ceiling.

The museum offers tours, demonstrations, and exhibits.

Meadow Brook Hall [MI]

Description

Meadow Brook Hall is the fourth largest historic house museum in the United States. Built between 1926 and 1929 as the residence of Matilda Dodge Wilson (widow of auto pioneer John Dodge) and her second husband, lumber broker Alfred G. Wilson, the 110–room, 88,000–square–foot mansion is complete with vast collections of original art and furnishings. The exterior and most of the interior rooms at Meadow Brook Hall were designed in the Tudor-revival style. However, a few rooms were decorated in other period-revival styles: the dining room and Matilda’s study are 18th–century Neoclassical, Matilda’s room and the French bedroom are 18th–century French Rococo, and Frances’ bedroom is American Colonial. The hall's collections include original paintings, sculptures, prints and drawings, furniture, ceramics, carpets, glass, silver, costumes and other textiles, and family archival materials. Highlights of the collection include Tiffany art glass, costumes by Paul Poiret, Stickley furniture, paintings by Sir Joshua Reynolds, Sèvres and Meissen porcelain, and Rookwood pottery.

The hall offers guided mansion and garden tours, period rooms, educational programs, and a variety of special events, including lectures.

Southwest Virginia Museum Historical State Park

Description

Southwest Virginia Museum Historical State Park contains a museum which interprets southwestern Virginia's pioneer and 1890s coal boom history. The museum is housed in the 1880s mansion of Rufus Ayers, a past Virginia attorney general; and boasts a collection of over 20,000 artifacts.

The museum offers exhibits, children's activities, workshops, educational programs, Scout programs, and picnic shelters. The grounds are largely wheelchair accessible, while the museum is not.

Gropius House

Description

Walter Gropius, founder of the German design school known as the Bauhaus, was one of the most influential architects of the 20th century. He designed this house as his family home in 1937, when he came to teach at Harvard's Graduate School of Design. Modest in scale, the house was revolutionary in impact. It combined the traditional elements of New England architecture—wood, brick, and fieldstone—with innovative materials rarely used in domestic settings at that time—glass block, acoustical plaster, and chrome banisters, along with the latest technology in fixtures. In keeping with Bauhaus philosophy, every aspect of the house and its surrounding landscape was planned for maximum efficiency and simplicity of design. The house contains an important collection of furniture designed by Marcel Breuer and made for the Gropiuses in the Bauhaus workshops.

The house offers tours and educational and recreational programs.

Lake Erie Islands Historical Society Museum [OH]

Description

The Lake Erie Islands Historical Society Museum presents information on the history of the Lake Erie Islands area in Ohio. The museum includes a boat building and information on Oliver H. Perry (1785–1819), victor of the War of 1812's Battle of Lake Erie; Jordan Freeman, one of Perry's crewmen; the Native Americans of the area; and everyday life circa 1900. Collections include an extensive variety of model ships and one of two remaining Francis Metallic Lifeboats in the United States.

The museum offers a 15–minute introductory film, exhibits, children's programs, tours, lectures, seasonal events, a research library, and archives. Reservations are required for school groups.

California Citrus State Historic Park

Description

This park preserves some of the rapidly vanishing cultural landscape of the citrus industry and tells the story of this industry's role in the history and development of California. The park recaptures the time when "Citrus was King" in California, recognizing the importance of the citrus industry in southern California. In the early 1900s, an effort to promote citrus ranching in the state brought hundreds of would-be citrus barons to California for the "second Gold Rush." The design of the park is reminiscent of a 1900s city park, complete with an activity center, interpretive structure, amphitheater, picnic area, and demonstration groves. The land contained within the park still continues to produce high-quality fruits.

The park offers exhibits, tours, demonstrations, educational programs, and recreational and educational events.