{"id":337338,"date":"2010-02-18T21:17:40","date_gmt":"2010-02-19T02:17:40","guid":{"rendered":"1836 at http:\/\/atlasobscura.com"},"modified":"2010-02-18T21:17:40","modified_gmt":"2010-02-19T02:17:40","slug":"woodman-institute-museum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/337338","title":{"rendered":"Woodman Institute Museum"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/atlasobscura.com\/globe\/north-america\/us\/new-hampshire\">New Hampshire<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/atlasobscura.com\/globe\/north-america\/us\">US<\/a> | <a href=\"http:\/\/atlasobscura.com\/categories\/museums-and-collections\">Museums and Collections<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The thing about natural history museums is that they are usually concerned about remaining &#8216;up-to-date&#8217; both scientifically and curatorially. This can make finding science museums that have the look and feel that they might have had around the turn of the century a rather difficult thing to do. The Woodman Museum is an exception to this rule.<\/p>\n<p>The museum was established on January 7, 1915 when philanthropist Annie Woodman, passed away leaving 100,000 to establish an &#8220;institute to promote local education in science, history and the arts.&#8221; Due to this expansiveness the museum has an eclectic collection, among it &#8220;egg collections in old glass cases with hand typed labels; taxidermied animals; a room full of old dolls; pinned butterflies; oyster jugs; and other local history items.&#8221; It is the natural history items that are particularly delightful today.<\/p>\n<p>Among the scientific items are the largest American rock and mineral collection north of Boston, a ten foot stuffed polar bear from the Arctic (actually a later edition shot in 1969 on an ice floe near Siberia), an old piano made with genuine ivory keys, a 37 pound lobster, a large green sea turtle, a &#8220;man-killing, bi-valve clam from Australia,&#8221; a collection of stuffed birds, exhibits of &#8220;shells, fish and reptiles, a moose, a polar bear, alligator, hippopotamus&#8221; a four legged chicken, a two headed snake, and (somewhat sadly), the last cougar to be killed in New Hampshire, shot in 1853.  <\/p>\n<p>Spanning four buildings the non-natural history items include a complete early garrison log cabin set up inside another building, the &#8220;saddle in which President Abraham Lincoln rode to review troops shortly before his assassination,&#8221; numerous war relics dating back to the revolution, an old 13 star American flag, and &#8220;a set of samurai armor a Japanese delegate to the 1905 Portsmouth Peace Conference (Treaty of Portsmouth) gave to a waiter at the Hotel Wentworth.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>A museum of a museum, stepping into the Woodman Institute Museum, is like walking a hundred years back in time.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/static.atlasobscura.com\/files\/imagecache\/place_main\/place_images\/3023533887_ded9d35376_b.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"\"  width=\"280\" height=\"390\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>New Hampshire, US | Museums and Collections The thing about natural history museums is that they are usually concerned about remaining &#8216;up-to-date&#8217; both scientifically and curatorially. This can make finding science museums that have the look and feel that they might have had around the turn of the century a rather difficult thing to do. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-337338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337338","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=337338"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337338\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=337338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=337338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=337338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}