Houston's Hidden Museums
Education, entertainment await beyond the city's Museum District1940 Air Terminal Museum Houston Maritime Museum Houston Fire Museum Museum of Printing History By Jennifer Babisak Since moving to Houston a few years ago, I’ve enjoyed exploring the world-class offerings of the 18 museums that comprise the city’s officially designated Museum District. However, I’ve recently discovered some lesser-known attractions that lie outside the bounds of the Museum District proper; these hold fascinating collections and offer visitors a more personalized (and less-crowded) experience. On a recent museum-hopping spree, I visited four of these interesting sites. 1940 Air Terminal MuseumHouston’s 1940 Air Terminal, which fully closed to aviation traffic in 1978, opened in 2004 as a museum with a threefold focus: preserving the historic building, displaying artifacts that illustrate the history of aviation, and promoting aviation-industry careers. Designed by Houston architect Joseph Finger and planted amidst Hobby Airport’s utilitarian landscape of concrete and machinery, the 1940 Air Terminal is one of the few surviving Art Deco air terminals in the nation. Its rounded angles, white stucco exterior, and carved friezes depicting the past, present, and future of flight hint at the Art Deco features found inside: symmetrical rooms, ornate baseboards and trim, and four white columns flanking a gorgeous, two-story atrium flooded with sunlight and accented by the original aluminum railings and brass chandelier. The historic air terminal displays memorabilia from 1910 to the present, though many of its artifacts are from the so-called “golden age of aviation”—the years between the first and second world wars, when civilian aviation became widespread. Among the museum’s many collections are menus and first-class place settings (complete with delicate china and real silver utensils), memorabilia and photos relating to the aviation exploits of Houston businessman Howard Hughes, model planes, and flight-attendant uniforms from the 1930s to the 1980s (including a Trans-Texas Airways uniform accented with pink and purple stripes). Some items make me chuckle, such as a flight-attendant evaluation from 1963 that suggested “make up should be of a lighter and less pink shade” and “eyebrows should be attended to more often.” In one fascinating display, I learn about the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP). This revolutionary WWII program trained more than 1,000 women as pilots to ferry planes and tow targets for artillery practice, freeing male pilots for combat roles. The WASP began their training at Hobby (then called Houston Municipal Airport) in 1942 before outgrowing the facility and moving to Sweetwater in 1943. Printed memorabilia related to the WASP include yearbooks emblazoned with WASP mascot Fifinella (a winged aviator-vixen created by Walt Disney for a proposed film), dolls equipped with parachutes and aviator apparel, and a Life magazine from 1943, its cover featuring a young woman with pigtail braids and the title “Air Force Pilot.” The cover made a splash because, at that time, the WASP program was the only female flight school in the world. A highlight of the 1940 Air Terminal experience exists outside the doors of the museum. Because once I exit, I’m within view of a stream of private and commercial planes taking off and landing at Hobby Airport. I watch the air traffic for a while, fascinated that this extraordinary method of travel has become so commonplace. Houston Maritime MuseumLess than half a mile east of the Houston Medical Center, the Houston Maritime Museum—housed in a two-story, 6,500-square-foot, clapboard boarding house built in the 1940s—preserves maritime history with particular emphasis on the industry’s influence on Houston and the Gulf Coast. Executive Director John Kendall, who served in the Navy for 25 years before taking the helm of the museum, leads me through the museum’s collection of treasures. One of the museum’s highlights is a collection of more than 100 intricately detailed model ships, including such famous vessels as the Mayflower, the RMS Titanic, and the still-active 1877 barque Elissa, which is berthed at the Texas Seaport Museum in Galveston. Kendall tells me that some of these models required more than 6,000 hours to build. Some models are only a few feet long; others stretch to nine feet. Christopher Columbus’ famous three ships are built to scale, with the Santa Maria and Pinta dwarfing the much smaller Niña, whose model measures 12 inches long. The museum also houses a collection of glass-encapsulated miniatures (think of the classic ship-in-a-bottle). Eighteenth-Century artisans—often sailors on long voyages—first created these dioramas inside glass bottles; later artists used many different kinds of glass containers, including light bulbs. One such work of art, crafted by famed Texas miniaturist Burton Reckles, shows the steamship Laura chugging up Buffalo Bayou en route to its first landing at the Port of Houston. In another of the museum’s nine galleries, I admire a display of scrimshawed buttons and other practical decorative arts. Whalers, often out to sea for years at a time, filled their spare time by using sailing needles and soot to etch intricate designs in whalebone or whale ivory. Though artifacts indicate that the Eskimos practiced scrimshaw as early as 200 B.C., the modern form of scrimshaw thrived among New England whalers (called scrimshanders) from the mid-1700s until the late 1800s. Another gallery, called the Port of Houston room, bears a quote from the Houston Ship Channel’s christening in 1914, when then-mayor Ben Campbell’s daughter Sue stood at the railing of the USS Windom and said, “I christen thee Port of Houston; hither the boats of all nations may come and receive hearty welcome.” Kendall tells me that the port is the second busiest in the nation (though it takes first place in foreign tonnage and imports, it falls behind South Louisiana in total tonnage), and traffic is expected to increase when the Panama Canal expands its capacity in 2014. To encourage children to consider such port careers as working for the Coast Guard or as customs agents, the museum showcases current photographs of men and women working in the port, along with associated uniforms and equipment. Displays of imported items like coffee and cotton, which arrive from throughout the world, remind me of how heavily global commerce depends on the sea. I’ll think about this economic impact the next time I see those twinkling Ship Channel lights in Houston’s night sky. Houston Fire MuseumBetween downtown and the Texas Medical Center, in a recently revitalized Houston neighborhood known as Midtown, the Houston Fire Museum interprets the city’s history through the lens of fire prevention and safety. Housed in a brick-and-stucco building that opened in 1899 and served the city for 70 years, the Fire Museum benefits from frequent off-duty visits by today’s firefighters, who talk to the public about their role in the city’s growth. This station, in fact, was the city’s first station to be designated for a paid firefighting squad (before then, all firefighting was done by volunteers). The exhibits here include such treasures as a 1937 Chevrolet pumper and a gleaming, red-and-gold 1895 Ahrens Fox horse-drawn steamer. Irma Molina, the museum’s visitor services coordinator, tells me that horses were an integral part of many fire departments between 1865-1915. After 1915, horse-drawn fire “trucks” began to be replaced by motorized vehicles, allowing the city’s infrastructure to expand. A reproduction of a 1930s watch office—outfitted with a narrow iron bed topped with a gray wool blanket, a wooden side table, and a desk—provides insight into the predecessor of our current 911 emergency system. This office would have been staffed 24 hours a day by a dispatcher who received telegraphed fire alarms and then passed them on to the nearest fire station. Often the alarms came from passersby, as red fire alarm boxes were located on many city street corners. According to Executive Director Tristan Smith, these boxes were in use through the 1970s, but ultimately were discontinued because stations received so many false alarms. In the children’s area, called Tyke Town, rambunctious tots scramble across the floor-to-ceiling model escape house. This playhouse, outfitted with fire-escape ladders, familiarizes kids with how to evacuate a house in the event of a fire. Kids can also practice sliding down a fire pole, don authentic fire-fighter gear, and play in the cab of a fire truck. The museum’s second floor features replicas of a fire-station dorm room and locker room, with each locker containing belongings typical of different decades, creating a visual history of the past century. The 1930s locker holds items such as a Lucky Strike cigarette pack, a news story about the Hindenburg explosion, and a weathered baseball glove; the 1980s locker reflects the new coed nature of the force with a women’s fire uniform and a Jazzercise advertisement. In a more somber display, a twisted, rusted hunk of steel from the World Trade Center bears an engraved memorial to those who lost their lives on 9/11. A FDNY helmet and slide show of the collapse of the World Trade Center completes the display. As if on cue, a group of firefighters walks into the museum
just as I’m leaving. Fresh from a fire, smoke still cloaking their uniforms,
they take time to pose for photos with visiting children. The Museum of Printing HistoryThe Museum of Printing History is one of five U.S. museums dedicated to the technology and impact of the printed page. Housed in a low, beige building near downtown, the museum tells its story with artifacts that range from Mesopotamian cylinder seals to behemoth photocopiers from the 1970s. Its softly lit galleries and busy working studios evoke a sense of creativity, vision, and invention. In the Americana Gallery, one wall bears an elegantly printed quote from Abraham Lincoln proclaiming, “To emancipate the mind is the great task which printing came into the world to perform.” This gallery contains dozens of antique newspapers, their yellowed pages and tiny type (8-point type was typically used in colonial times) bearing witness to such moments in American history as the 1765 Stamp Act Riots and the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation. An elegant 1854 Columbian iron handpress, topped with a golden eagle, stands in the middle of the room. Using this press, operators could produce up to 250 pages per hour. The golden eagle served more than a decorative purpose; it functioned as a counterweight to provide force for the impression. The museum also houses a replica of a Gutenberg press; tour groups are allowed to operate both presses to create copies of the Declaration of Independence and a page from the Gutenberg Bible. The museum’s replica of the Gutenberg Bible sits atop an ornate gold pedestal, its black Latin text adorned with colorful illustrations and flourishes. Amanda Stevenson, the museum’s curator, tells me that in the mid-1400s, Johann Gutenberg printed about 180 copies of this Bible, and that 48 of them survive today. In the museum’s working galleries, resident artists
demonstrate stone lithography, letterpress printing, papermaking, and
bookbinding. The architectural elements of these galleries—brick walls, wood
floors, and stained glass, with iron tools hanging on the walls—create the feel
of an 18th-Century print shop. See the full article in the December 2011 issue. |
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