Mission
Located in University Circle, an arts and culture district of Cleveland, the Society houses and curates collections of cultural artifacts and documents from various people. The mission of the Western Reserve Historical Society is "to inspire people to discover the American experience by exploring the tangible history of Northeast Ohio." [2] This is accomplished by collecting, preserving and presenting the history of all the people of the Western Reserve. WRHS is a private, membership-based society that also receives funding through investments, grants, and gifts.
History
The Western Reserve & Northern Ohio Historical Society formed in 1867, initially as a branch of the Cleveland Library Association, which had been founded in 1848. [1] [3] It sought to record the history of "...Cleveland and the Western Reserve, and generally what relates to the history of Ohio and the Great West," later broadening to Northeast Ohio. [1] Its first president was Charles Whittlesey, "a geologist and historian".
The society was initially located "on the third floor of the Society for Savings Bank in downtown Cleveland". [4] The site is now Key Tower, the site of the KeyBank headquarters. [1] The institution first opened to the public in 1871 and purchased the entire bank building in 1892 due to the increasing size of the collections. That same year, it became an independent organization from the Cleveland Library Association. [1]
From 1898 until 1938 the society resided at E. 107th St. and Euclid Avenue. [3]
WRHS moved to its present location in the late 1930s. [5] In the same period, it acquired the Hay-McKinney mansion, which now hosts the society's museum. [1] Other mid-century acquisitions included the Jonathan Hale homestead in Bath, Ohio in 1957, which now operates as a living history museum. [1]
The 1960s saw a broadening of historical preservation, as the Society began initiatives to record the history of minority populations in Northeast Ohio, including the African-American, Jewish, Italian, Irish, and LGBTQ communities, as well as the local labor movement. [1]
"By the early 1980s, the Western Reserve Historical Society had become one of the largest private historical societies in the United States. In 1986, its library contained approximately 250,000 books and six million manuscript items." [4] [6]
Hale Farm and Village
Located in Bath, Ohio, Hale Farm & Village, a museum of the Western Reserve Historical Society (WRHS) is a "living history museum depicting life in the 19th century through agricultural practices and everyday craft and trade demonstrations such as glassblowing, pottery, spinning and weaving, and more."
Hale Farm's core mission is education, a place where the past is brought to life through a combination of living history experiences, historic architecture, domestic craft and trade demonstrations, farming and heritage gardens.
Hale Farm & Village depicts rural life in the Western Reserve through the experiences of three generations of Hales, from pioneer Jonathan Hale's arrival in 1810 through the bequest of the family farm to WRHS by his great-granddaughter, Clara Belle Ritchie, in 1956. Her will directed WRHS to "establish The Hale Farm as a museum, open to the public to the end that the greatest number of persons may be informed as to the history and culture of the Western Reserve." In 1973, The Hale Farm was listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the Jonathan Hale Homestead.
Located in the heart of the Cuyahoga Valley National Park, Hale Farm & Village is the ultimate outdoor classroom with thirty-two historic structures, heritage breeds of livestock, gardens and crop fields, costumed staff, early American craft and trade demonstrations, and a year-round calendar of educational and public programs and community events that explore the rich, rural American experience in the Western Reserve.
Hale Farm structures
- Jonathan Hale House (built 1825–1827); the house was one of only two all-brick buildings in the Cuyahoga Valley at the time of its construction.
- Jonathan Goldsmith House (built c. 1830) was built for the William Peck Robinson family in Willoughby, Ohio by Jonathan Gillett Goldsmith (1784–1847)
- Fritch Log Cabin
- Log Smoke House
- Sugar House
- Sawmill
- The John A. McAlonan Carriage Manufactory
- The Stow House
- The Saltbox House
- The Jagger House
- Schoolhouse
- The Land Office
- The Mary Ann Sears Swetland Memorial Meetinghouse
- The Wade Law Office
- The Jonathan E. Herrick House
- The Aten Log Barn
This page is based on this
Wikipedia article Text is available under the
CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
