Boston Children's Museum

Early years

The idea for a children's museum in Boston developed in 1909 when several local science teachers founded the Science Teacher's Bureau. One of the Bureau's main goals was to create a museum:

it is planned to inaugurate at the same place, a Museum, local in its nature and to contain besides the natural objects, books, pictures, charts, lantern slides, etc., whatever else is helpful in the science work of the Grammar, High and Normal Schools. The specimens are to be attractively arranged and classified and the room open daily to children or anyone interested in such work.

The Women's Education Association also helped the Science Teacher's Bureau with the planning for the children's museum in Boston. After four years of planning, The Children's Museum officially opened on August 1, 1913, at the Pinebank Mansion located along Jamaica Pond in Olmsted Park in Boston's Jamaica Plain neighborhood. It is the second oldest children's museum in the United States. The first museum contained two cases: one devoted to birds and the other to minerals and shells. The exhibits were kept at children's eye level, used simple language, and complemented the lessons taught in school. George Hunt Barton served as the museum's first president. Delia Isabel Griffin was appointed the first curator of the museum.

During the early years of the museum, leaders created branch museums throughout Boston so that children in other parts of the city could experience the museum as well. The first branch museums were located in schools, including the Quincy School on Tyler Street, the Abraham Lincoln School, the Samuel Adams School in East Boston, and the Norcross School in South Boston. These museums usually consisted of a single room that contained a case of some specimens. In 1919, the Children's Museum opened a much larger branch museum in the Barnard Memorial Building on Warrenton Street. Known as the Barnard Memorial Branch Museum, it contained a number of different exhibits throughout the building. The Barnard branch closed in 1926.

In 1935, the museum's lease on the Pinebank Mansion expired, and leaders decided that they needed a bigger space for the museum. They learned that a property was available a few blocks away on 60 Burroughs Street on the Jamaica Way and purchased the building from the Mitton family. The Children's Museum opened at its new location on November 18, 1936.

Michael Spock, son of Dr. Benjamin Spock, served as the director of the museum from 1962 to 1985. Under Spock's leadership, Boston Children's Museum introduced the idea of "hands-on learning" to the museum field, and the first interactive exhibit in the museum, "What's Inside," was created during his term. In 1972 the museum was accredited by the American Alliance of Museums. The Computer Center at the Children's museum had a working, modified UNIX system running on a PDP-11/40 with "kidproofed" hardware and software in August 1974.

Move to Fort Point Channel

In 1979 Boston Children's Museum moved into half of an empty wool warehouse on the Fort Point Channel in order to gain more space and become more accessible to people in Boston. (From 1984 through 2000, the other half of the building was occupied by The Computer Museum.) The following year, Boston's Japanese sister city Kyoto donated a Japanese silk merchant's house to the museum. The house, known as Kyo-no-Machiya, is still one of the landmark exhibits at Boston Children's Museum.

In 1986, Kenneth Brecher became the director of the museum. During his term, Kids Bridge, a groundbreaking exhibit on cultural diversity and racism, opened at the museum. The exhibit later moved to the Smithsonian Institution before embarking on a 3-year tour around the United States.