Fun Fact Friday Archives - Page 2 of 2 - Mariners' Blog

scan0004 — Ship Model Shop, January 1937

This month’s fun fact is about our Great Hall of Steam exhibition, which is our gallery that includes many large ship models. What many may or may not know is that a good number of the models exhibited were built here at the museum. On July 19, 1932, we opened a ship model shop for the purpose of creating models that could be displayed.

When the work began, they decided to do models of contemporary ships so that the plans from the actual ships could be used. Most of these ended up being ships that had been built at Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company. The first model the shop started working on was that ofPresident Hooverof the Dollar Line, although a model of the tugJohn Twohy, Jr. was finished first.Read more

Main gallery space, November 28, 1933 (2)

Going through old records and photographs for the museum really brings to mind how many fascinating little facts there are about this place that most people don’t know. I decided to create a regular Fun Fact Friday post on here to highlight these interesting tidbits. For now it will probably be once a month, but after I do some more research I may be able to expand to every other week or so.

Without further ado, here is our first fun fact. Most of the time when museums open for the first time they have a grand opening, or at least some type of event to mark their beginning. We did not. On October 29, 1933, visitors to the park were admitted to the museum with no fanfare. As we often say around here, we opened because one day people just started wandering inside. The picture below shows what those first visitors would have seen in the museum. After spending so much money to build the museum and park and to obtain the collection, it all seems very anticlimactic.