Two Days at the Beach – And Some Great Museums in Saint Petersburg Florida

By Jeff Burns

The beaches of the Tampa Bay/Clearwater/Saint Petersburg area have drawn throngs of tourists for over a century, but there is much more to enjoy than just great beaches. History and Art lovers have some great museums to visit too!

One of the jewels in Saint Pete for a number of years has been the Dali Museum, opened in 1982. From the Museum website:  “The Dali Museum celebrates the life and work of Salvador Dali (1904-1989) and features works from the artist’s entire career. The collection includes over 2,100 works from every moment and in every medium of his artistic activity, including oil paintings, many original drawings, book illustrations, artists’ books, prints, sculpture, photos, manuscripts and an extensive archive of documents. Founded with the works collected by A. Reynolds and Eleanor Morse, the Museum has made significant additions to its collection over the years.” The collection is amazing, and if you are a Dali aficionado, it is a must-see.  The Dali also attracts other world-class exhibits that complement Dali’s works. 

Perhaps the most unexpected discovery on our most recent trip was The Imagine Museum, a museum dedicated to the medium of art glass. Maybe it doesn’t sound exciting at first, but believe me, you will be blown away (pun, get it?) by what you see.  Incredibly beautiful and provocative works can be found in every gallery, and you will see things that seem impossible.
 

The Tampa Bay History Center is located in downtown Tampa on the beautiful Riverwalk and is well worth your time. There, see the history of the area unfold, from the earliest inhabitants to Spanish exploration to the development of the cigar industry, and much more.

For more about things to do in Tampa, check out our older blog on Ybor City (the start of modern Tampa), and consider the Henry Plant Museum.  The Plant is located in an 1891 hotel, not too far from the Riverwalk and Ybor City areas.  It is now a museum owned by the University of Tampa and dedicated to the Gilded Age, the period when the wealthy flocked to Tampa to vacation, thanks to the work of early Florida railroad magnate Henry Plant.  The hotel was also the headquarters of the American forces as they prepared for the Spanish American War.

One Day at the Beach – And Some Great Museums in Saint Petersburg Florida

By Jeff Burns

The beaches of the Tampa Bay/Clearwater/Saint Petersburg area have drawn throngs of tourists for over a century, but there is much more to enjoy than just great beaches. History lovers have some great museums to visit too!

After a morning (or afternoon) at the beach in Saint Petersburg, visitors owe it to themselves to sample an iconic landmark for lunch or dinner.  Ted Peters Famous Smoked Fish has been open for more than 65 years, serving a relatively simple menu:  smoked fish (mullet, mackerel, salmon, mahi) and a couple of sides.  The fish is smoked for hours, in a tradition that is centuries old, going back to indigenous Floridians.  Be sure to order the smoked fish spread as an appetizer.

 

While in Saint Pete, you have to visit the newly opened (April 2018) James Museum of Western and Wildlife Art. Located in a beautifully remodeled parking garage downtown, it’s designed to look like sandstone cliffs from the outside.  On the inside, you will find 30,000 square feet of space displaying a portion – yes, a small portion at that – of a huge private collection of western and wildlife art. Most of the artists on display are still living, and they may not be as famous as Remington or Catlin, but it is an absolutely phenomenal collection, one of the most beautiful collections I’ve ever seen.  The James may well be the best western art museum in the world, or at least a close second to the Buffalo Bill Center in Cody Wyoming. (Educator discount for admission with ID.)

The Florida Holocaust Museum is also located in downtown Saint Pete. Of course, it is a difficult subject, but this museum does an excellent job of illustrating and educating about the Holocaust. We were fortunate to catch an incredible special exhibit about the capture and trial of Adolf Eichmann, considered the architect of the Final Solution. The museum also offers free traveling trunks for educators to use in their classrooms. (Educators admissions are free with school ID.)

Don’t forget to stop by the Saint Petersburg Museum of History to see local history, the role of baseball and aviation in the region and even a replica of King Tut’s Tomb. 

Charleston: Happy Historic House Hopping!

By Jeff Burns

Charleston South Carolina is full of history, wherever you look.  There is no shortage of historic homes that you can tour.  Sure, on Plantation Road, you can see several plantations, or the remains of plantations. However, I think the real treats are the houses in town.  For most of the plantation owners, plantation life was not suitable for entertaining and socializing, so most planters owned a townhouse as well.  Many of these houses have been carefully preserved, and they comprise a fascinating part of Charleston’s unique architectural history.

If visiting Charleston, your first stop has to be the Visitors Center. Knowledgeable, friendly people are there to answer any questions and to make recommendations, and you can purchase a Heritage Passport that you will need.  For one bargain price, you can get admission to most of the houses and numerous other sites. From the downtown visitors center, go across the street to the Charleston Museum, which bills itself as America’s oldest museum. There you can see Charleston’s story, the natural and cultural history of the South Carolina low country.

Nearby, the museum maintains two outstanding house museums: the Joseph Manigault House and the Heyward-Washington House. The Manigault House was built in 1803 by one of the wealthiest rice-planting families, and it is a terrific example of Federal-style architecture and furnishings. 

The Heyward –Washington House was built by a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and George Washington stayed there for a week during his presidency. It has another famous person connection, as well. It was the childhood home of Sarah Grimke.  Sarah and her sister Angelina were unique in American history.  Born to a prominent slave-owning family, the sisters became two of the most famous abolitionists and women’s rights advocates of their day.

Garden and rear 

I wrote about the Aiken Rhett House in another blog, as an example of preservation instead of restoration.  The goal  is to show the original house as much as possible. It was built around 1820 and passed down through family members for 145 years.  One of the most interesting aspects of this house tour is the life of the urban slaves who worked here.  The two prominent outbuildings are the kitchen/laundry and the stables/carriage house.  Twelve or fifteen slaves lived and toiled here.

At the opposite end of the spectrum is the Nathaniel Russell House, built in the late 1700s by one of the wealthiest planters and merchants in Charleston. It is beautifully restored to the state of luxury and grandeur that one of America’s wealthiest families of the 18^th century enjoyed.

These are just a few of the impressive house museums open to you when you visit Charleston.  Don’t miss them!

Charleston, South Carolina: Telling the Story Through Preservation

By Jeff Burns

If you’re a history lover, Charleston is a great city for you to visit.  In colonial America, it was one of the most prosperous cities, and it was a leading city of the South well into the 19^th century.  Of course, Charleston is also where the Civil War began, when South Carolinians opened fire on Fort Sumter, forcing its surrender.  Charlestonians are keenly aware of their history, and they have been for quite a while.  Charlestonians have been actively preserving and commemorating their rich history for well over a century. There’s history everywhere you turn in the city and surrounding area.  

A visitor to Charleston can not only enjoy this history and the gracious hospitality for which Charleston has long been famous, but also enjoy a lesson in historical preservation versus restoration. We’ve all been in beautifully restored homes and buildings where the trustees have gone to great pains to display the house as it might have been in its prime, carefully re-creating carpets, wallpaper and paint, and  furniture.  Some houses are even fortunate enough to have some of the original family possessions to display.  Charleston has a number of these houses, and they are great.  However, Charleston also has a couple of examples of another way of thinking, preservation.

Preservation is the idea that the buildings themselves tell an important story.  The mission of preservationists is to keep the building as close to its original condition as possible and to arrest any deterioration.  Therefore, when you enter a preserved house, you won’t see furniture or fineries.  Instead you’ll see faded paint, torn wallpaper and carpets, exposed boards, and even holes in the wall. 

There are two great preservation sites in Charleston.  First is Drayton Hall, first occupied in the 1750s and passed down through family members until it became a historic site in the 1970s.  It is a rarity on Charleston’s Plantation Road, virtually the only “big” house not destroyed by Union troops during the Civil War.  Legend has that it the occupant at the time, a physician, saved the house by flying yellow flags on the road, alerting Union troops to the smallpox cases being treated there.  Apparently, the plantation had been used to treat small pox among slaves, but historians still haven’t confirmed the story.

Drayton Hall is a can’t-miss sight in Charleston.  We were fortunate to have a guided tour from Mac, a young docent whose excitement about working at Drayton was clearly visible, as he led us from room to room.  Although the house is devoid of furnishings, Mac’s knowledge and stories helped us visualize life on the plantation over the years.  Two features stand out for being very evocative. One is the unmistakable set of fingerprints on one of the bricks in an interior wall, fingerprints probably belonging to a slave boy of 10 or so who was a brickmaker or an apprentice.  Most of the bricks used in Charleston construction were made by slaves on local plantations, of local clay. The second is the little hole cut into the bottom of the attic door, possibly the oldest extant cat-door in the United States, cut so that the cat could have easy access to attic rodents.  

In the city, there is another example of preservation.  Many of the plantation owners had townhouses as well, for entertaining and urban living.  One of these houses now owned by the Charleston Museum is the Aiken–Rhett House, built around 1820 and occupied by the same family for the next 142 years.  Not only do you see the house on the self-guided tour, but you also get a small sense of the life of the urban slaves who lived and worked in the kitchen, laundry, stable, and carriage house out back.

For more pictures, go to the Histocrats’ Facebook page and explore the Charleston album.

Day Trip: Thermopolis, Wyoming

By Jeff Burns

Thermopolis Wyoming is the county seat of Hot Springs County, with a population around 3,000.  The name Thermopolis is Greek for “Hot City”, in reference to the numerous hot springs which have drawn tourists to the area since the 19^th century.

The Hot Springs State Park is located in Thermopolis, and you can bathe in thermal mineral pools, with a temperature around 104 degrees (F), for free.  There are also two water concessions in the park, Teepee Pools and Star Plunge, where you can pay to enjoy water slides and other pool fun.  Once out of the pool, be sure to drive around the park and see the Wyoming state buffalo herd.

The Hot Springs County Museum is a must-see, with a great collection of artifacts from the 19^th and early 20^th century.  One great exhibit consists of a simulated raised wooden sidewalk that takes you down a street of the Old West, allowing you to see inside the storefronts.  Across the street, there are several buildings housing special collections, including an old schoolhouse and a caboose.

Interested in ancient history? Technically, pre-history?  East Thermopolis is home to the Wyoming Dinosaur Center.  Wyoming is rich in fossils of all kinds, and the museum proudly displays many Wyoming finds, as well as specimens from around the world.  You can see the only Archaeopteryx fossil in North America, and you can even go out to an active dig site.

Enjoy a day in Thermopolis, one of the few you places you can relax in a mineral spring and learn about millions of years of history.

Not a Whole Lotta Shakin’ Going On Anymore

By Jeff Burns

In the mid- 1700s, an offshoot of Quakerism arrived in the American colonies.  Members called their faith the United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearance.  Outsiders called them the “Shaking Quakers” or Shakers, because their religious ecstasy was often expressed physically through dance.  Eventually led by Mother Ann Lee, who was later revealed as the second coming of Christ herself, the sect developed dozens of small communities that all practiced communalism, pacificism, and celibacy.  They were ahead of their time by believing in the equality of the sexes and races, and they were often innovators and early adopters of agricultural and technological  developments, supporting their communities by selling fruits, vegetables, foods, furniture, and crafts.  At Shaker-ism’s peak in the mid 19^th century, there were about 6,000 believers. Today, there is only one active community, Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village in Maine, with four members, and Shaker furniture and crafts are highly prized for their aesthetics of simplicity and functional beauty, and several Shaker villages are now village museums.

My first Shaker village was Canterbury in New Hampshire (http://www.shakers.org/). Canterbury Shaker Village was created as an historic site in 1969, and visitors can see 25 restored original Shaker buildings, 4 reconstructed Shaker buildings, and 694 acres of forests, fields, gardens, nature trails, and mill ponds.  The exhibits are very interesting and informative, and you can choose to take a tour or see it on your own.  Be sure to stop at the restaurant for lunch as well, and the gift shop has a great selection of book, crafts, and gifts to choose from.

Dormitory at Canterbury.  Shakers lived communally in shared rooms, with men on one side of the building and women on the other. 

School at Canterbury.  Even though Shakers practice celibacy, they accepted pregnant women and widows with children, along with orphans.  At 21, children are given a choice to either remain in the community as Shakers or to “secede” and leave the community.

The Guest House, just outside the community for family visitors and others who had business with the community.  They stayed here and met with Shakers here so that they wouldn’t contaminate the community with sin from the outside world.

Hancock Shaker Village is in western Massachusetts, and it became a historic farm village in 1959. It’s a little more interactive than Canterbury, with tours as well as interpreters demonstrating Shaker community life. You can see demonstrations of farming, blacksmithing, weaving, baking, woodworking, and oval box-making. Be sure to check out the unique round barn also. 

 The round barn interior

Shaker Village Museums are a great way to spend a day.  If you find yourself near one, be sure to check it out.  Here’s a site that lists locations: http://www.shakerworkshops.com/catalog/directory-of-shaker-villages-and-museums.php.