The Toy Shop facts for kids
Quick facts for kids The Toy Shop |
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The Toy Shop
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| General information | |
| Location | Shelburne, Vermont |
| Coordinates | 44°22′39.95″N 73°13′45.38″W / 44.3777639°N 73.2292722°W |
The Toy Shop is a special building at the Shelburne Museum in Shelburne, Vermont. It's filled with cool toys from the 1800s and early 1900s. You can see tiny toy cars, trucks, and boats, fun penny banks, and even old-fashioned music boxes!
Contents
How the Toy Shop Came to Be
The Shelburne Museum built the Toy Shop in the early 1950s. It was added onto an older building called the Variety Unit. The Variety Unit was built in 1835 and is the only original building on the museum's land.
It's a great example of "continuous" architecture, which was common for farmhouses in New England. Farmers would add new parts to their homes as they needed more space. This way, their house and farm buildings were all connected. It also meant they didn't have to go outside in bad weather to get from one part of their home to another. The Toy Shop was built onto the back of the Variety Unit, continuing this old tradition.
A World of Toys
Everyone loves to play! For a very long time, people have made toys when they weren't busy with important tasks like finding food. Old toys can tell us a lot about the people who made them and played with them.
The Shelburne Museum has a huge collection of toys. They come from both Europe and the United States. You can see toys from the early 1800s all the way up to the early 1900s. Some were made by hand, and others were made in factories.
Simple and Smart Toys
Simple toys like clay or glass marbles and balls made of cloth, wood, or rubber were very popular. As factories got better at making things, these toys started appearing in new materials.
Around the late 1700s, educational games began to appear. These games show us what skills and subjects children were expected to learn back then. By the 1800s, many toys were being made in factories in America and Europe. This shows how technology was improving and how ideas about childhood and playtime were changing.
Toys from Long Ago
In early American history, children played with toys made in Europe or simple ones made at home. Small businesses in both Europe and America made wooden blocks, hobby and rocking horses, puppets, dolls, and other simple toys from paper, cloth, wood, and metal.
After the American Civil War, Americans found better ways to make toys. They became leaders in making things like cast-iron banks, tiny boats and wagons (made of tin, cast iron, or wood), and lithographed optical toys and board games.
Handmade Fun
Even though the United States was making lots of toys in factories by 1900, people still made toys by hand. Some toys, like whistles made from willow branches or dandelion stems, just couldn't be made in a factory.
Also, if families couldn't afford to buy toys, they would often make them at home. Even rich people sometimes enjoyed carving a tiny cradle or a hobby horse, or sewing a doll dress as a special gift. Kids also loved making their own toys! In the 1800s, there were even books and magazines with patterns and instructions for children to make toys.
See also
- Shelburne Museum
- Variety Unit
- Toy store
- Toy
