I recently visited Lewes, DE for ‘Maritime Day’ by the harbor and there were a lot of interesting booths on the watersheds, environmental agencies that discussed their purpose with harbor issues and what the town of Lewes does for the environment.
The historic Blizzard from 1888
History of the Lewes Life Saving Station & Museum:
(From Historic Lewes.com)
It was also a busy station, guarding both the mouth of Delaware Bay and the protected waters created by the massive breakwaters of the National Harbor of Refuge. Its string of Keepers and their six- or seven-man crews of Surfmen enacted scores of rescues through the years and in particular won great praise for their tireless heroics during the Great White Hurricane of 1888, when they pulled scores of sailors from the frigid waters and iced-over hulks of wrecked vessels to safety.
The front of the museum
The History of the Lewes Lifeguard Museum:
(From the Historic Lewes.com)
The United States Life-Saving Service (USLSS) protected the American coast and saved lives in peril at sea from 1871 until 1915, when it became a part of the new United States Coast Guard (USCG). This incredible humanitarian mission came to Lewes in 1884, making it the fourth of six stations to be established in Delaware. Lewes was among the most desirable stations for the Keepers and Surfmen who manned it, with its original location on the site of the present-day Cape May-Lewes Ferry Terminal placing it not far from town and therefore civilization.
The view of the harbor which has changed over the years
I spent my time touring the Lewes Lifeguard Museum, which is an interesting little museum on the history of life saving along the Delaware coast. The museum’s artifacts show some of the earliest and innovative forms of rescue equipment from before the Civil War. This was the precursor to the United States Coast Guard.
The inside of the museum
The lower part of the museum contained most of the equipment, items like rescue ropes, wenches, rescue apparatus, lanterns and uniforms like jackets and boots.
Pulled and equipment used to rescue stranded people
History of the Lewes Historical Museum:
(Historic Lewes.com)
The United States Coast Guard maintained the Station Lewes from 1915 until 1969, when it was closed, declared surplus, and sold. The original main station building was relocated numerous times and still stands today, heavily modified, as the Rehoboth Beach VFW. The Boat House preserved by Historic Lewes, a unique 1884 addition to the USLSS station intended to launch lifeboats on a marine railway directly into the harbor, was acquired from the Pilots’ Association of the Bay & River Delaware in 1979 and moved to its present home at Canalfront Park. It stands proudly beside the Lightship OVERFALLS (LV-118), together commemorating the nation’s and community’s efforts to preserve life on hazardous waters.
The bullies and wenches used by the men
Information in the Lewes Life Saving Station
Biography of the men who worked there
Information on the Boat House
Some of the ropes and wenches used in the rescue procedures
On the other side of the building was the rescue boat the ‘Life Car’, a rudimentary form of rescue boat that the docents said was effective but clunky and hard to use. It shows how we have progressed in life saving.
The Life Car rescue unit
Information on the ‘Life Car’
The ‘Life Car’
The ores and other rescue equipment used
The small rope cannon
The ores
The rope equipment
The story of the ‘Great White Hurricane of March 1888’
The Men’s Dining area in the front of the building
There was no living area in the facility but a place to gather the team, eat and socialize when manning the station.
History of Lewes Lifeguard Museum:
(From the Lewes Lifeguard.com)
Guests visiting the USLSS Boat House today will find it furnished just as Keeper John Clampitt and his courageous Surfmen left it on March 12, 1888, as they pushed out into the roaring gale and whipping snow for their finest hours. It also features a display of early life-saving equipment, including the rope-and-pulley Breeches Buoy rescue system, a steel life-car, and a rare 1887 Long Branch, New Jersey-style surfboat under restoration.
The dining area and the schedule
The dining room table
The Lewes Life Saving Station & Museum is an example of early beach and shipping rescue at the East Coast Shore. It also shows the daily life of these brave men and how lonely and dangerous this job could be. It shows how times have progressed and how they have stayed the same. To save people and property.
There is always a lot of excitement when a new art exhibition is ready to open. It is even better when the museum opens it to its members first before the public gets a glimpse. It gives a chance to see the exhibitions before it opens to the public.
The long line of MoMA members waiting to get into the museum for the opening night of Artist Ruth Asawa’s exhibition
I noticed this year especially and right before Thanksgiving, all the museums are throwing open their doors for Member’s Nights. I have been invited to five Members Nights at museums all over the City. You can’t attend them all.
The excitement the museum creates for these evenings
Video of entering the museum at the start of the opening with 80’s Japanese Pop Music
I think in an economy like this, these Members Nights are one of the best ways to engage with the membership for both donations and renewals of memberships especially before the holiday season. Plus it gives the members a wonderful night out to see the exhibitions ahead of time and enjoy the evening after a long week at work.
Born on a farm in Southern California, Asawa began her arts education when she was a teenager and she and her family were among the thousands of persons of Japanese descent who were forcibly incarcerated by the US government during World War II. It was at the internment camp that Asawa began taking classes in painting and drawing. After her release, Asawa studied to be a teacher but was unable to get a license because of her Japanese heritage, so she enrolled at Black Mountain College, an experimental art school in North Carolina. Asawa took classes from and worked alongside fellow artists Josef Albers, Robert Rauschenberg, Merce Cunningham, and R. Buckminster Fuller. Black Mountain was also where she met her husband, the architect Albert Lanier.
I loved her wire woven sculptures.
The wire woven sculptures were the standouts of the exhibition
I thought these were a unique design
I liked here colorful paintings, these are of her child’s footprints. I loved the idea that her children were involved with the art
The patrons enjoying the art
The display of the wire art
The displays were impressive and graceful
The colorful faces looked tired
The look of nature in the wire art in the form of trees
I loved her works of food
At the end of the exhibition and the evening, I joined everyone on the main floor where the bar and gift shop were located. The main floor was the busiest part of the museum. I wondered if some of these people even went upstairs to see the exhibition or just stayed downstairs to socialize.
The main floor of the museum is always packed with people
Share in the excitement of the Membership opening
These evenings always get my mind off the stress of life. It is nice to just be in Midtown Manhattan and be in the moment. It is nice to see art, hear music and walk through the museum.
The National Baseball Hall of Fame at 25 Main Street
When visiting the National Baseball Hall of Fame be prepared to spend over two hours in the museum because there is so much to see. When I visited the museum recently they had just inducted Derek Jeter as one of its newer members so a lot of Yankee fans were swarming around the picture and the display.
Derek “The Captain” Jeter being inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame
The museum can be overwhelming if you don’t break it down to the part of the visit. I wanted to see the Hall of Fame plaques so I started there. All the players of the past were memorialized by the pictures on plaques with a small blurb about their careers and what team they wanted to be remembered by when they were inducted in.
My hero, Reggie Jackson ‘Mr. October’
I was looking for Reggie Jackson, because I remember when “Mr. October” entered he said with pride that he was coming in as a Yankee. He was one of my hero’s of the 1970’s.
The Hall of Fame Plaque Wall
The Hall of Fame Gallery
The second floor is loaded with all sorts of baseball memorabilia from Hank Aaron’s uniforms, pictures and stats to a complete display of all of Babe Ruth’s career history from uniforms, stats, recordings, pictures and even his locker.
Babe Ruth display
The Babe Ruth exhibit
The Babe Ruth panel
Each display case represented the history of baseball and how it has progressed over the years. From the early Egyptians playing a similar sport with a bat and ball to the progression of cricket in the British Territories to modern day stickball in the cities, baseball keeps morphing and changing to modern times.
The history of Baseball
The CC Sabathia exhibit on his coming into the Hall of Fame
Many famous players have donated their entire collections to the museum so it was interesting to see their progression from the time they were young to the time of their retirement.
The Japanese baseball history
There are also collections of baseball cards, recordings and films, modern day artworks and even Hollywood’s take on baseball with posters like the “Field of Dreams” and “The Bad News Bears”. I was surprised how the lines between reality and the truth begin to blur in a museum like this.
What I was grateful to was the amount of items donated by the fans, wanting to part with something so valuable to them to share it with other fans.
The NY Yankee dynasty
I have to say that the museum can be a little overwhelming at time since there is so much to see so plan on spending at least over two hours and break the visit into two days to really experience the museum especially if you are a true baseball fan at heart.
It is an amazing experience.
The Women’s League history
The outfits for Women’s Baseball League
History of the National Baseball Hall of Fame:
(From the museum website)
The Village is pure Americana, a one-stoplight town nestled between the Adirondacks and the Catskills in Central New York. It drew from the family of James Fenimore Cooper, whose father, William, founded the village, whose works of literature have become American standards.
And yet Cooperstown has become a synonym for “baseball”, thanks to a story about a Civil War general and the country’s love for a timeless game. By the last half of the 19th Century, baseball had become the National Pastime. The United States was a little more than 100 years old and baseball had evolved with the country. But there was no definitive answer as to the birth of the game.
Enter the Spalding Commission, a board created by sporting goods magnate and former player A. G. Spalding to establish the genesis of baseball. And after a few years of searching, they found their answer.
A plaque commemorating Major General Abner Doubleday was installed prior to the Hall of Fame’s opening on June 12th, 1939.(Homer Osterhoudt/National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum).
The Abner Doubleday display
Abner Graves, a mining engineer, proclaimed that Abner Doubleday, a decorated Union Army officer who fired the first shot of defense of Fort Sumter at the start of the Civil War and later served at the Battle of Gettysburg, invented baseball in 1839 in Cooperstown. That was good enough for the Spalding Commission, which came to its conclusion in 1907.
Three decades later, Cooperstown philanthropist Stephen C. Clark, seeking a way to celebrate and protect the National Pastime as well as an economic engine for Cooperstown, asked National League president Ford C. Frick if he would support the establishment of a Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. The idea was welcomed and in 1936 the inaugural Hall of Fame class of Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson, Christy Mathewson, Babe Ruth and Honus Wagner was elected.
Three years later, the Hall of Fame building officially opened in Cooperstown as all of baseball paused to honor what was called “Baseball’s Centennial” and as the first four Hall of Fame classes were inducted.
To mark the occasion, Time Magazine wrote: “The world will little note nor long remember what (Doubleday) did at Gettysburg but it can never forget what he did at Cooperstown.”
In the years since, The Doubleday Myth has been refuted. Doubleday himself was at West Point in 1839. Yet the Myth has become strong enough that the facts alone do not deter the spirit of Cooperstown.
The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum surely the most well-known sports shrine in the world, continues to thrive in the town where baseball’s pulse beats the strongest.
But in the following the opening of the Hall of Fame on June 12th, 1939, the Museum has become much more than just home to baseball’s biggest stars. The Hall of Fame is the keeper of the game.
The Hall of Fame’s collections contain more than 40,000 three demensional artifacts, such as bats, balls, gloves and uniforms donated by players and fans who want to see history preserved. The museum’s curators use the artifacts, whose number grows by about 400 a year, to tell the story of the National Pastime through exhibits.
The Museum itself is a melding of five buildings sewn together via several renovation and expansion programs. Today, the Museum easily accommodates more than 3000 visitors per day during the peak season.
The artifact collection is housed in climate-controlled rooms to protect the delicate, fabric and wood materials used in baseball. The Museum promises, in exchange for the donation of an artifact, to care for an item in perpetuity, which means the effects of temperature and humidity must be constantly regulated. The Museum’s first accessioned item was the “Doubleday Baseball”, which was discovered in a farmhouse in nearby Fly Creek, NY in 1935 and dates to the 19th Century.
Then in 1937, Cy Young, elected to the Hall of Fame that year in the second year of voting, generously donated several artifacts, including the 1908 ball from his 500th win and the 1911 uniform he wore with the Boston Braves. Young’s donations generated new offers from other players as well as fans.
Thousands of fans attended the opening of the Hall of Fame on June 12th, 1939 and that same year another Cooperstown tradition was started with the launch of the annual Hall of Fame game. For 70 years, the Hall of Fame game became an annual celebration of the game as two Major League Baseball teams played an annual exhibition contest at Doubleday Field in Cooperstown.
Though the game was discontinued in 2008, the legends live on with the advent of the Hall of Fame Classic, an annual event over Memorial Day Weekend featuring Hall of Famers and former major leaguers at historic Doubleday Field.
The field itself dates back to 1920 and the first grandstand was built in 1924. Thanks to Works Progress Administration money during the Great Depression, Doubleday Field was expanded again in 1934. Today, the field is occupied non-stop during the spring, summer and fall as high school athletes, collegiate summer league stars and recreational players savor the chance to play on hallowed ground.
The A. Bartlett Giamatti research Center is also part of the Museum experience and the Center’s Library contains more than three million documents on the history of baseball, ranging from reference books to the “Green Light Letter” sent by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to baseball commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis in January of 1942, urging Landis to keep baseball going during World War II. The National Baseball Hall of Fame Library also contains more than 250,00 baseball photographs and images.
As an educational institution, the Museum offers outreach programs for audiences of all ages. Through virtual classroom technology, Cooperstown is transported to school across the country with video-conference lessons featuring any one of 16 learning modules.
The Joe Di Maggie award
Mission of the Museum:
Preserving History, Honoring Excellence and Connecting Generations.
The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum is an independent, non-profit educational institution dedicated to fostering an appreciation of the historical development of baseball and its impact on our culture by collecting, preserving, exhibiting and interpreting its collection for a global audience as well as honoring those who have made outstanding contributions to our national pastime.
The Yogi Berra panel
The Hall of Fame’s mission is to preserve the sport’s history, honor excellence within the game and make a connection between the generations of people who enjoy baseball. Likewise the institution functions as three entities under one roof with a museum, the actual Hall of Fame and a research library. With these parts working together, the Museum is committed to fulfilling its mission by:
Collecting, through donations, baseball artifacts, works of art, literature, photgraphs, memorabilia and related materials which focus on the history of the game over time, its players and those elected to the Hall of Fame.
Preserving the collections by adhering to professional museum standards with respect to conservation and maintaining a permanent record of holdings through documentation, study, research, cataloging and publication.
The Mariano Rivera plaque
Exhibiting material in permanent gallery space, organizing on-site changing exhibitions on various themes, with works from the Hall of Fame collectins or other sources, working with other individuals or organizations to exhibit loaned material of significance to baseball and providing related research facilities.
Interpreting artifacts its exhibition and education programs to enhance awareness, understanding and appreciation of the game fora diverse audience.
The Mike Mussina plaque
Honoring, by enshrinement, those individuals who had exceptional careers and recognizing others for their significant achievements.
Open: To Groups on Fridays and Saturdays and to individuals on Saturdays 10:00am/12:00pm/2:00pm
Fee: Free to Individuals/Donations welcome-Groups tours are $100.00 for up to five people with an additional $15.00 fee per person. There is also an administration fee of $25.00 for groups over 20 people.
The Sara Delano Roosevelt Home at 47-49 East 65th Street
It is amazing what you discover when you are walking around the Upper East Side of Manhattan. I was exploring the Streets of the Upper East Side for my blog, ‘MywalkinManhattan’ and when walking around the Hunter College Campus came across the Sara Delano Roosevelt Memorial House at 47-49 East 65th Street.
This beautiful brownstone was built as a wedding present to Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his wife, Eleanor and their future family by his mother Sara Delano Roosevelt. It was their New York City residence until they moved to the White House. His mother continued to use the house until her death in 1941 when the home was sold to Hunter College.
Tours are available when the building is open (Hunter College is currently closed) and you can tour the whole house. The home was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.
History of the Sara Delano Roosevelt Memorial House:
The Neo-Georgian townhouse was designed by architect Charles A. Platt for Sara Ann Delano Roosevelt in 1907. It originally held “two mirror-image residences with a single facade and entrance. Each floor had its own front reception room with a welcoming fireplace. Rear parlous could be combined through sliding doors
The mansion at 47-49 East 65th Street on the Upper East Side
The house was given to the Roosevelt’s by Franklin’s mother as a wedding gift for them. The house originally two homes and Franklin’s mother had doors put in place so she could enter their part of the home whenever she wanted. The house was used by Sara Ann Delano Roosevelt from its completion in 1908 to her death in 1941 and intermittently by the Roosevelts until the sale to Hunter College in 1943.
The house historical marker
After his mother’s death in 1941, President Roosevelt and his wife placed the house up for sale and a non-profit consortium was organized to purchase the house on behalf of Hunter College.
The Extended Roosevelt family
The house was closed in 1992 and reopened in 2010 after an $18 million renovation. Leslie E Robertson Associates was the structural engineers on this renovation. The building is currently used by Hunter College as the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College or just known as the Roosevelt House.
The inside of the house’s museum
(Disclaimer: This information was from Wiki and I give them full credit for the History of the Roosevelt House).
Visiting a Museum: The Unique, Unusual, Obscure and Historical 