One of the largest C.S. Lewis collections in the world is located at Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois (located about an hour west of Chicago). This collection officially began in 1965 when a Wheaton College English professor, Dr. Clyde S. Kilby, proposed that the College create one. The collection started out with fifteen letters of…
Tag: Museum
National A. Philip Randolph Pullman Porter Museum
In 2015, Chicago received its first National Park Monument when President Obama granted the title to the Chicago neighborhood of Pullman. This neighborhood is historically significant because it was once the home of the Pullman Car Company, which created the first sleeping cars for trains. George Pullman founded both the Company and the Pullman neighborhood…
Sibelius Museum in Turku, Finland
Turku is Finland’s oldest city, former capital, and third largest city. Therefore, it is full of history. One museum that I visited while I was in Turku was the Sibelius Museum (officially spelled the Swedish way: Sibeliusmuseum). Both the Sibelius Museum and the music notation software, Sibelius, are named after Jean Sibelius, Finland’s most famous…
Pritzker Military Museum and Library
On the corners of Monroe St. and Michigan Ave. in Downtown Chicago is a skyscraper built in 1912 called the Monroe Building. The second through fourth floors of this building house the Pritzker Military Museum and Library. Founded in 2003, this non-profit research center began as the personal military collection of retired Lieutenant Colonel J….
William Breman Jewish Heritage Museum
Named after the man who created it in 1996, the William Breman Jewish Heritage Museum in Atlanta, Georgia helps preserve and present Southern (United States) Jewish history. In fact, it may be the largest repository of Southern Jewish history in the world. I had the privilege of visiting this museum in 2014. Prior to my…
Ernest Hemingway Birthplace Museum
In April of 2021, the famous documentarian, Ken Burns, released a 6-hour documentary called Hemingway. As its name implies, this documentary is about the Pulitzer Prize and Nobel Prize-winning American writer, Ernest Hemingway. I have not seen the film, but based on Ken Burns’ other works, I am sure that it does a fantastic job…
American Writers Museum
In 2017, the American Writers Museum opened in downtown Chicago. Located in a section of a high-rise building, its goal is to teach visitors about famous writers from the United States. I visited the museum in 2017, the same year that it first opened, so its exhibits may still be evolving. Overall, the museum is…
Jewish Museum of Maryland
Founded in 1729, the city of Baltimore, Maryland was established before the United States gained its independence from Great Britain in 1776, thus making it an old city according to U.S. standards. Unsurprisingly, then, Baltimore has the third oldest surviving synagogue building in the United States. Although the Lloyd St. Synagogue, located on Lloyd St….
Museokeskus Vapriikki
Tampere is a city in southern Finland that is approximately a two-hour drive north of Finland’s capital city of Helsinki. The city was once home to numerous industries in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as can be attested by the presence of old factory buildings there. Nevertheless, the buildings are well-kept and the city…
The Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University
Founded in 1851 in Evanston, Illinois (a Chicago suburb), Northwestern University ranks among the top universities in the United States. Therefore, unsurprisingly, it has its own museum on campus. Mary and Leigh Block founded the Block Museum of Art in 1980 with the goal of educating both students and the public about art. Although most…
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