Wednesday, June 12, 2013

Evergreen Museum & Library

Today the kids and I went to Evergreen House. It is part of Hopkins’ museums and houses many rare books. It is a great example of a Gilded Age house and belonged to the Garret family. They were into railroads big time since the very beginning. Fascinating. Unfortunately, no pictures were allowed in the house. The kids will all tell you about the gold bathroom (toilet seat was even covered in 24 karat gold leaf). There was Tiffany glass galore. 23,000 books, art, pictures… Amazing!

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We explored the gardens first because we had to wait for a tour.

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That is looking toward the back of the house.

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The room on the left with the three arched windows is the library. They have a hand copied and illuminated manuscript from around 1435, a broadsheet from 12/27/1776, a collection of documents signed by every signer of the Declaration of Independence, a double elephant (meaning huge) first edition of Audubon’s bird books, and many, many more interesting and rare books.

The long wing on the right is a gymnasium on the top floor (later made into a theater) and a bowling alley on the ground floor!

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Here is the impressive front of the house.

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We did some exploring. Then, we still had some time to kill before the tour so we played word memory games. Everyone did very well, but there was a lot to remember by the end.

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