Minnesota History Sites: Minnesota History Center and James J. Hill House

We’ve been saying that we should visit the Minnesota History Center and the James J. Hill House for years, but we don’t get to St. Paul very often.  We just aren’t city people.  When we decided that we would be mostly staying home for spring break from school, we thought it might be nice to have a little overnight trip to break up the week, and that presented the perfect opportunity to do a little historical trip.  The whole mini-vacation worked out great.  Everyone had a good attitude.  (So, so very rare here). Things went smoothly, and we all learned a lot of history.

Because we weren’t able to leave until late morning on Tuesday, we arrived at the History Center around 2:30, but hooray for us, Tuesday happens to be the day that the History Center is open late, until 8:00, so we weren’t rushed at all.  The History Center was the perfect museum for a family with kids more spread out in age range.  There is so much information packed into every exhibit that teenagers and grown ups simply cannot leave without learning a TON, but every exhibit is also chalk full of interactive things for small kids too.  For example, they can crawl into sod house, a teepee, and explode “dynamite” in an underground mine.  There is a play area designed like a grain elevator, and a soda shop from the 1930’s where they can create all sorts of imaginary deliciousness.  Truly there wasn’t a part of the museum that the kidlets didn’t like.

In the atrium as we walked up to the third floor where the exhibits are, a Jenny airplane from the 1920’s banks a turn, suspended from the ceiling.  It was really neat to see how the wings were constructed (they would have been covered with fabric when the plane was actually flying).  I loved that this was on display because I had just finished reading the YA novel Black Dove, White Raven by Elizabeth Wein, and this airplane plays a huge part in the story.  It was neat to be able to visualize it so much better after seeing the plane in the History Center.

We spent several hours combing through the great exhibits.  Bit by bit, each one of us decided we’d seen everything we wanted to see and read.  When Dr. Peds goes to a museum, he carefully reads every single sign in each exhibit.  I think I read most of the signs too, but I must just take in things more quickly (and maybe forget them more quickly too) because I was finished, and he had only been through half the museum!  Thankfully there were some very comfortable chairs to wait around in.  Little by little, more of my kidlets joined me.

We waited for a couple of hours.  After all that waiting, when we got back outside, the kidlets were a bit squirelly in the parking lot.  OK, so they were actually crazy and wild and full of ruckus. 

We headed to our hotel.  I took a nap because I had a bit of a headache, and they ate supper and went swimming.  After a terrific hotel breakfast the next morning (we are at the stage where we REALLY make use of a complimentary hotel breakfast) we headed to the James J. Hill House.

I was so busy learning from our excellent tour that I didn’t really take pictures, but we all really enjoyed going here a lot.  It was really fun to compare this behemoth mansion to our local mansions, Glensheen and Fairlawn Mansion.  Each time I visit a place like this I leave so very curious to know more about the people who lived and worked here.  I want to know the stories of the servants, details about the children growing up here, and more about what went on in the minds of the people who built these huge mansions.  There is such a conundrum for me about how they exploited people and resources to gain such wealth and power (that didn’t really last after their death), and yet they usually loved their families and often did great things for their communities , legacies for which I am very grateful.

One of my favorite parts of this mansion was the enormous pipe organ in the art gallery!  Wow!  HUGE!  And no one in their family even played the organ . . . they just had it installed as a status symbol of the day.