Eli Whitney Museum

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Eli Whitney Gun Factory
Eli Whitney Gun Factory William Giles Munson 1827.jpg
1827 painting of the Gun Factory by William Giles Munson
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Location915-940 Whitney Ave., Hamden, Connecticut
Coordinates 41°20′09″N72°54′38″W / 41.33583°N 72.91056°W / 41.33583; -72.91056 Coordinates: 41°20′09″N72°54′38″W / 41.33583°N 72.91056°W / 41.33583; -72.91056
Area9.9 acres (4.0 ha)
Built1798 (1798)
NRHP reference No. 74002049 [1]
Added to NRHPAugust 13, 1974
Eli Whitney Museum
ELI WHITNEY GUN FACTORY.jpg
Eli Whitney Museum
Established1979
Location Hamden, Connecticut
DirectorRyan Paxton
Website www.eliwhitney.org

The Eli Whitney Museum, in Hamden, Connecticut, is an experimental learning workshop for students, teachers, and families. The museum's main building is located on a portion of the Eli Whitney Gun Factory site, a gun factory erected by Eli Whitney in 1798. The museum focuses on teaching experiments that are the roots of design and invention, featuring hands-on building projects and exhibits on Whitney and A. C. Gilbert. [2]

Contents

Site history

The museum is located on grounds that were originally developed by Eli Whitney to produce muskets on a site he purchased on September 17, 1798. The factory was powered by water from the Mill River and produced muskets for the United States government. On June 14, 1798, he contracted to produce 10,000 muskets to be delivered within 28 months at the cost of $134,000.00; in fact, it took ten years. When he signed the contract, Whitney had no factory, no workers and no experience in gun manufacturing. However, in a letter to Secretary of the Treasury Oliver Wolcott, a fellow Yale University graduate and friend, Whitney had written:

I am persuaded that Machinery moved by water adapted to this Business would greatly diminish the labor and facilitate the manufacture of this Article. Machines for forging, rolling, floating, boring, grinding, polishing, etc. may all be made use of to advantage.... (May 13, 1798)

Whitney's factory was at the very forefront of the American Industrial Revolution, using water-powered machinery, and it was among the first to have standardized, interchangeable parts (for some but not all of its parts).

The area around the museum was once known as Whitneyville, the manufacturing village constructed along the Mill River to house the workers at the Whitney Armory, and made famous by painter William Giles Munson, who sketched the Armory in 1826, a year after Whitney died, creating at least 3 paintings from those sketches over the next two decades. The Armory produced firearms for 90 years until it started losing competition to Winchester Repeating Arms Company in late 1880s and aging son of the inventor Eli Whitney Jr. sold the factory to them in 1888, who promptly closed it down. [3] Due to defensive patent aggregation by Winchester, no design of the firm was ever produced again.

The grounds, which span both sides of Whitney Avenue and cross the Mill River, still feature the old barn, stone coal shed and boarding house which date back to the days of Whitneyville and the operational armory, along with a reconstruction of Ithiel Town's innovative lattice truss covered bridge erected on the original pilings of one of the two bridges built to service the Eli Whitney Armory. [4] The museum occupies a portion of the site, between Whitney Avenue and the Mill River, occupying a brick factory building built on the site in 1890. The barn and boarding house, located west of Whitney Avenue, are occupied by other nonprofit organizations.

Museum exhibits and activities

A popular exhibit is the museum's yearly holiday installation of model trains. EWM model trains 2007.jpg
A popular exhibit is the museum's yearly holiday installation of model trains.

The Eli Whitney museum has exhibits on Whitney and his most famous invention, the cotton gin. Other exhibits cover the historic site and A. C. Gilbert, the inventor and toy maker best known for his invention of the erector set. [5] The museum is an experimental learning workshop for design and specializes in building projects for children blending science and invention. The site is located adjacent to the dam first built by Eli Whitney to power the armory, then raised to its current height by Eli Whitney Blake to provide more power. The museum also features water tables with canal locks and is adjacent to a water reservoir as well as hiking trails. In addition to visitor hours, the museum hosts summer and holiday programs and birthday parties, and is home to the annual Leonardo Challenge, a celebration of improvisational creativity that invites artists and designers from the New Haven, Connecticut area to create uncommon inventions and designs from common objects, culminating in an exhibition of their creative efforts. [2]

Apprenticeship Program

In addition to day and weeklong education programs, the Museum supports about 60 apprentices at a time for longer-term, paid, hands-on experience. Apprentices age between 13 and 18, and generally work 200 hours through the school year, and 400 hours in the summer. They learn design, fabrication, and teaching skills, which they put to work developing and teaching exhibitions and projects. [6] Apprenticeship alumni include Jennifer Oxley (Emmy Award-winning children's TV creator), Emily Oster (Economist), and Joshua Revkin (Star World Champion sailor). [7]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eli Whitney</span> American inventor (1765–1825)

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Croton Aqueduct</span> Pipeline that carried water to New York City from its reservoirs in 19th century

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lake Whitney (Connecticut)</span> Body of water

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Whitneyville, Connecticut</span> Neighborhood in New Haven, Connecticut, United States

Whitneyville is a neighborhood in the southeastern portion of the town of Hamden, Connecticut. It started in the early nineteenth century as a factory town for workers in Eli Whitney's gun factory. Around the turn of the twentieth century, it evolved into a trolley suburb of New Haven. Today it is primarily residential, with a mixture of single-family homes and small apartment and condominium buildings. There is some commercial development centered around the intersection of Whitney and Putnam avenues.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Whitneyville Congregational Church (Hamden, Connecticut)</span> Historic church in Connecticut, United States

The Whitneyville Congregational Church, now the Whitneyville United Church of Christ, is a historic Congregational Church at 1247-1253 Whitney Avenue in the Whitneyville section of Hamden, Connecticut. The congregation is now affiliated with the United Church of Christ (UCC). The church building is a Greek Revival style built in 1834, with an interior altered in 1866 to designs by Rufus G. Russell. The church, along with its 1924 parish house, was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1995 for its architecture.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thresher Mill</span> United States historic place

The Thresher Mill is a historic industrial facility on West Barnet Road in Barnet, Vermont. First developed in 1836, it was the last water-powered mill to operate on the Stevens River, lasting into the late 20th century. The property, which includes an original mill dam and a surviving 1872 mill building, as well as archaeological sites of other industrial buildings, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1996. It is now styled Ben's Mill, and is a local museum.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michigan Maritime Museum</span>

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pistol Factory Dwelling</span> Historic house in Connecticut, United States

The Pistol Factory Dwelling is a historic house at 1322 Whitney Avenue in Hamden, Connecticut. Built in 1845 and enlarged before 1860, it is an unusual example of a Greek Revival worker's boarding house, built by Eli Whitney II to house workers at his nearby pistol factory. The house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1991.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Centerville, Hamden</span> Neighborhood in New Haven, Connecticut, United States

Centerville, originally spelled Centreville, is a neighborhood in the east-central portion of the town of Hamden, Connecticut. It is the location of Hamden Town Hall and other major town government buildings. It derived its name from being at the intersection of the town's two principal thoroughfares, Whitney and Dixwell avenues, both with commercial development. The rest of the neighborhood is residential, with single-family houses, condominiums, and apartments.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Highwood, Hamden</span> Neighborhood in New Haven, Connecticut, United States

Highwood is a neighborhood in the south-central portion of the town of Hamden, Connecticut. It is primarily residential, with a mixture of small apartment buildings and single-family, two- and three-family homes. Commercial development is concentrated on its principal street, Dixwell Avenue. Immigrants from Germany were the first to settle the area extensively in the 1860s, followed by others from Ireland, Italy, and Eastern Europe later in the nineteenth century. Today it is predominantly African American.

References

  1. "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places . National Park Service. March 13, 2009.
  2. 1 2 Eli Whitney Museum
  3. "Antique Arms, Inc. - Whitney Kennedy Large Frame Lever Action Rifle".
  4. Elizabeth Mills Brown, New Haven, a guide to architecture and urban design, accessed October 15, 2012
  5. 1 2 Carolyn Battista (29 December 1996). "Age Is Irrelevant When Little Trains Fly Around the Tracks". The New York Times . Retrieved 2007-12-31.
  6. "Children's Workshop". tribunedigital-thecourant. Retrieved 2017-12-29.
  7. "Apprenticeship | The Eli Whitney Museum and Workshop". eliwhitney.org. Retrieved 2017-12-29.