Museum of American Heritage facts for kids
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| Established | 1990 |
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| Location | 351 Homer Avenue Palo Alto, California |
| Visitors | 10,000+ |
The Museum of American Heritage (MOAH) is a cool museum located in Palo Alto, California. It's all about showing off amazing electrical and mechanical inventions from the past. You can see things from the 1750s all the way up to the 1950s! The museum has a huge collection of old gadgets and machines. Some of these special items are displayed in a historic house at 351 Homer Avenue in Palo Alto. MOAH is a non-profit group that helps keep these historical treasures safe.
Contents
Discovering the Museum's History
The Museum of American Heritage first opened its doors to the public on September 20, 1990. Before it became a museum, it was the private collection of a man named Frank Livermore (who lived from 1919 to 2000).
The museum moved a few times before finding its current home. It started at 275 Alma Street in Palo Alto, then moved to a former car dealership. Finally, in 1998, it opened at its current spot on Homer Avenue. When Frank Livermore passed away, his collection had about 1,000 items. He set up a special fund to make sure his collection could be shared with everyone. By 2021, the MOAH collection had grown to over 8,000 amazing artifacts!
Exploring Cool Exhibits
The museum has five rooms with changing exhibits. These exhibits feature items from the museum's own collection or from other local collectors. They change several times a year, so there's always something new to see!
Some past exhibits have included:
- Frank's Cabinet of Curiosities: Celebrating 30 Years (2020-2021)
- Cointraptions: Classic Coin-Operated Machines (2019-2020)
- The Happy Homemaker: History of Household Appliances (2019)
- Vintage Toys: It's Child's Play! (2018-2019)
- In the Groove: A History of Record Players (2018)
- Thomas Edison and His Rivals: Bringing Electricity to America (2017-2018)
- Open for Business: Office Success Before Computers (2017)
- Pinball! An Exhibition of Vintage Pinball Machines (2016)
Besides the changing exhibits, there are also permanent displays in six rooms of the historic Williams House. These include:
- An early 1900s Kitchen, showing how people cooked long ago.
- A 1920s General Store, filled with items from an old Chicago shop.
- A working Print Shop with old-fashioned printing machines.
- An Early Automobile Garage and Workshop, showing how cars were cared for in the past.
The Museum's Amazing Collection
The museum's main goal is to collect and keep safe all sorts of electrical and mechanical items. These items were invented or built between the 1750s and the late 1950s. The museum often accepts donations of items that fit these time periods.
The huge MOAH collection is stored in a special warehouse. It's not usually open to the public, but items from it are used in the museum's exhibits. The collection includes things like old sewing machines, typewriters, cameras, radios, televisions, clocks, toys, and kitchen appliances. With over 8,000 items, it's one of the biggest collections of its kind in the United States!
Other museums and groups can even borrow items from MOAH for their own displays. Places like the San Francisco International Airport museum and the Los Altos History Museum have borrowed things from MOAH. You can look through the museum's collection database when you visit the main museum in Palo Alto.
The Historic Williams House
Home of Dr. Thomas Williams
The Museum of American Heritage is located in the beautiful Williams House on Homer Avenue. This house was built in 1907 by Dr. Thomas Williams. He used it as both his home and his private medical office. Dr. Williams was famous for opening the very first doctor's office in the Palo Alto area. This office eventually grew into the well-known Palo Alto Medical Clinic.
The house has a special design called Tudor Revival. It was designed by an architect named Ernest Coxhead. The Williams family owned the house until the last daughter, Rhona Williams, passed away. She left the house to the city of Palo Alto to be used for the community.
New Home for the Museum
In 1997, the city of Palo Alto looked for ideas on how to use the house. They chose the Museum of American Heritage's plan! After a lot of careful work to restore the house, the museum opened its doors there in 1998.
Some interesting parts of the Williams House include:
- A two-story section where the family lived, with lots of built-in cabinets. (The upstairs is not usually open to visitors.)
- A single-story part designed just for Dr. Williams' medical practice. It even had an operating room with a big skylight for light!
- A large separate garage that once held one of the first cars in Palo Alto.
The Williams House is now on the Palo Alto Historic Inventories list. This means it's recognized as an important historic building. There's also a newer building behind the main house, called the "Livermore Learning Center." It's built where a small fruit orchard used to be.
The Beautiful Williams House Gardens
Old photos of the Williams property show an open space with a clear view of the house. But Dora Williams, Dr. Williams' wife, loved gardening. Her garden grew to be very complex and beautiful in the 1920s and 1930s. She kept detailed notes about her garden over the years. These notes helped the museum restore the garden to look just like it did back then!
This garden is special because it shows what a typical home garden looked like in the early 1900s. It has "outdoor rooms" created by rock walls and plants, with pretty fountains and ponds.
The garden also had practical uses for the Williams family. It included a vegetable garden, a medicinal plants garden, and areas for drying clothes and composting. It's thought to be the only historically preserved garden in Palo Alto, and one of the few in California! The Museum of American Heritage is working hard to keep the Williams House Garden beautiful.
See also
- Silicon Valley Museums, for a listing of nearby museums and art galleries
