Wednesday, December 28, 2022

Mercer Museum

Saw some neat stuff yesterday...


The Mercer Museum is a six-story reinforced concrete castle designed by Henry Mercer (1856-1930) and completed in 1916.  Today, it is one of Bucks County’s premier cultural attractions and a Smithsonian affiliate.

The museum complex features local and national traveling exhibits, as well as a core museum collection of over 50,000 pre-Industrial tools. This permanent collection offers visitors a unique window into pre-Industrial America through sixty different crafts and trades, and is one of the world’s most comprehensive portraits of pre-Industrial American material culture. The museum also features a research library that is a center for local history related to Bucks County and the surrounding region, with its roots dating back to the founding of the Bucks County Historical Society in 1880.



















6 comments:

Revenant Manor said...

Simply incredible. I was only peripherally aware of the name, and barely knew of the existence of the museum, and had NO idea I'd been missing out on something like this.

After falling down the proverbial rabbit hole for a little while, it's hard to believe any of it is real...it all reads like someone dropped an Indiana Jones-style character into a Arthur Conan Doyle story:

"Harvard and UPenn educated lawyer turned archaeologist-artifact collector-paleontologist-architect, who in his spare time is an activist battling against the plume trade, and part-time chronicler of the supernatural..."

The man's already improbable background is even more incredible when placed against the backdrop summarized in these images, which appears to be the American version of Hogwarts. (I just have to believe that nearly every piece on those walls is intrinsically magical)

The combination of the man, time period, collections, and structures seem like a just-add-water recipe for a great movie, and I would 100% buy a ticket for opening night.

Rot said...

Same. I would buy that ticket. The place was truly amazing. Also went to his Moravian Tile Works facility and will be posting photos soon.

MR. Macabre said...

Very cool, I could probably spend a couple of days just looking at everything.

Lady M said...

Like those weird little Punch and Judy clowns.

Haunted Eve said...

Mr. Haunted Eve here,
When I was a kid my parents took me one summer to the Mercer Museum. I want to say very late 70's/very early 80's. It was only about an hour drive from my hometown of Washington, NJ. I unfortunately was far too young to really appreciate it at the time.

Evil Vines Cemetery said...

That looks super neat!