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American Heritage Museum
Military history museum in Massachusetts, United States From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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The American Heritage Museum is a military history museum located on the grounds of the Collings Foundation in the town of Stow, Massachusetts, 21 miles (34 km) west of Boston. The collection consists of over 100 artifacts, most of which were formerly part of the Military Vehicle Technology Foundation collection in Portola Valley, California.[2] Over half of the items on display are from the World War II era, with World War I, the Korean War, Vietnam War, Gulf War, Iraq War, and the War on Terror also represented. Most of the items on display, including tanks and artifacts, are American, German, Russian, or British in origin.[3]
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History
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Beginning in the early 1980s and continuing for the next 20 years, Jacques Littlefield, a Stanford University graduate and former Hewlett Packard engineer, amassed a $30 million collection of military vehicles and engaged in a program of restoring many of them and giving educational tours to the public.[4][2] By the time of Littlefield's premature death in 2009,[5] his collection had expanded to over 240 vehicles.[6] In accordance with his objective of preserving the collection for the future, [7] donated its collection to the Collings Foundation, a non-profit educational institution founded in 1979[8] with a mission dedicated to the preservation and public display of transportation-related history. The Collings Foundation then auctioned off[9] 120 of the vehicles, netting $9.5 million[10] to fund the creation of a new 69,000-square-foot (6,400 m2)[8] museum to display the remaining 80 items in the collection at the Collings Foundation headquarters in the Boston area.[2]
Meanwhile, in August 2015, the Planning Board of the Town of Stow initially rejected the Foundation's application to build the museum,[11] questioning the propriety of locating such a large facility on land that was zoned for residential use. In its defense, the Foundation cited Massachusetts' Dover Amendment, which the Foundation believed would exempt the museum from zoning restrictions, on the grounds that its purpose would be primarily educational in nature.[12][10] Ultimately, an agreement was reached between the two parties in July 2017,[8] and construction of the museum was completed in 2018. The museum held a preview opening in October 2018[13] and had its grand opening in May 2019.[14][15][16][17]
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Exhibits
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Visitors are encouraged to begin their tour with the viewing of a brief introductory film, followed by the immersive walk-through of the "WWI Trench Experience" room, containing a recreation of Western Front trenches at the Battle of Saint-Mihiel, the first and only offensive launched solely by the United States Army in World War I. Visitors next enter the "War Clouds" room, which is a short movie which covers the Interwar period and the rise of Nazi Germany. Visitors then exit to the main display room of the museum, in which artifacts are arranged roughly chronologically and grouped under major campaigns and theaters of war.
The museum also includes a section of the Berlin Wall, and a September 11 memorial featuring a twisted steel beam from one of the World Trade Center towers. The steel beam was dedicated in a ceremony at the museum on September 11, 2018.[18]
The museum opened an exhibit in 2023 about the Hanoi Hilton using materials salvaged from the original building,[19][20][21]
In January 2024 a restored WWII-era Deutsche Reichsbahn rail car was dedicated in a solemn ceremony at the Museum, to become part of a growing exhibit on the Holocaust. This cattle car is of the type used to transport millions of Jewish and other persecuted groups to concentration and extermination camps between 1933 and 1945.[22]
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Collection
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Some of the major artifacts currently on display are as follows:[3]
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See also
- Tank museums
- The Tank Museum – England
- Imperial War Museum – England
- Kubinka Tank Museum – Russia
- Musée des Blindés – France
- Military museum Lešany – Czech Republic
- Deutsches Panzermuseum – Germany
- Yad La-Shiryon – Latrun, Israel
- Parola Tank Museum – Finland
- Australian Armour and Artillery Museum – Australia
- Nationaal Militair Museum – Soesterberg, The Netherlands
- Royal Tank Museum – Amman, Jordan
- Base Borden Military Museum - Canada
- American military museums
- The International Museum of World War II – Natick, Massachusetts (closed)
- National Museum of the Pacific War – Fredericksburg, Texas
- National World War I Museum and Memorial – Kansas City, Missouri
- The National WWII Museum – New Orleans, Louisiana
- National Museum of the Marine Corps - Triangle, Virginia
- Heartland Museum of Military Vehicles – Lexington, Nebraska
- Other resources
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References
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External links
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