Museums32.3771° N, 94.8670° W
Kilgore, TX
An immersive museum recreating a 1930s oil-boom town with derricks, shops, drilling equipment and theatrical exhibits.
- Access
- Open to visitors
Museums
Everything OddWay knows about. Narrow it down by what you're after, or where you're going.
Museums1,031
Suggest a stopSmall, specific collections run by people who care far too much.
- Museums40.8655° N, 73.8942° W
Bronx, NY
Edgar Allan Poe lived in this small Fordham cottage from 1846 until shortly before his death, and his wife Virginia died here in 1847. The preserved house is now a museum containing exhibits and period furnishings connected to Poe's final years, with regular weekend hours and additional private tours by arrangement.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Museums39.2913° N, 76.6331° W
Baltimore, MD
Edgar Allan Poe lived in this tiny Baltimore rowhouse with members of his family from roughly 1833 to 1835. The preserved house now operates as a museum devoted to Poe's life and writing, with period rooms, exhibits and artifacts connected to one of America's most enduring masters of the macabre.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Museums37.5322° N, 77.4261° W
Richmond, VA
Richmond's Poe Museum holds the world's largest collection of Edgar Allan Poe manuscripts, letters, first editions, personal belongings and memorabilia. The museum opened in 1922 in Richmond's oldest surviving residential building and includes the atmospheric Enchanted Garden inspired by Poe's writing.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Museums39.9620° N, 75.1500° W
Philadelphia, PA
Edgar Allan Poe lived in this Philadelphia house during one of the most productive periods of his writing career in the 1840s. The National Park Service preserves the empty rooms and exhibits about Poe's work, including the dark stories that helped define American horror literature.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Museums41.8270° N, 71.4080° W
Providence, RI
RISD's Nature Lab holds tens of thousands of natural-history specimens used for art and design study, including bones, shells, insects, preserved animals and other biological material. Dense cabinets of specimens make the collection feel somewhere between an art studio and an old cabinet of curiosities. Public access varies with RISD programming, so check ahead.
- Access
- Seasonal or ticketed
- Museums41.7054° N, 70.2425° W
Yarmouth Port, MA
The former home of illustrator Edward Gorey preserves the wonderfully macabre world behind his small, grim books and drawings. Exhibitions mix original art, personal objects and eccentric collections from an artist whose work was filled with mysterious deaths, ominous children and dark humor.
- Access
- Seasonal or ticketed
- Museums41.8680° N, 71.3992° W
Pawtucket, RI
This hands-on museum packs a large rotating collection of vintage and modern pinball machines, electromechanical games and classic arcade cabinets into a former industrial building. Admission currently covers unlimited free play rather than individual tokens or quarters. It is both a museum and a functioning preservation workshop for old amusement technology.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Museums30.3074° N, 97.7261° W
Austin, TX
The castle-like former studio of sculptor Elisabet Ney preserves monumental statues, plaster models and the strange domestic-workspace atmosphere of her Austin years.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Museums27.2142° N, 80.1765° W
Stuart, FL
Museum with a mechanical multi-level robotic vehicle storage system and eclectic local collections.
- Access
- Seasonal or ticketed
- Museums33.5299° N, 80.5739° W
Elloree, SC
Elloree’s local-history museum contains an unexpectedly theatrical recreation of an old general store featuring an animatronic shopkeeper, Mr. Snider, along with a preserved mule and other artifacts. The moving figure gives the small-town museum a distinctly OddWay quality.
- Access
- Seasonal or ticketed
- Museums35.9137° N, 81.0829° W
Hiddenite, NC
This working mineral site allows visitors to prospect for emeralds, hiddenite, quartz, sapphires, garnets, and other stones by sluicing, creeking, or digging. The mine promotes itself as the only emerald mine in the United States open to public prospecting. Location reference: https://rockhoundr.com/emerald-hollow-mine-hiddenite-north-carolina/
- Access
- Seasonal or ticketed
- Museums42.5482° N, 70.9301° W
Danvers, MA
Traditionally dated to the 1630s, this ancient pear tree is often called the oldest cultivated fruit tree in North America. It has survived storms, vandalism and centuries of development and still produces fruit, although access is restricted because it stands on private corporate property.
- Access
- Seasonal or ticketed
- Museums42.3211° N, 72.5330° W
Amherst, MA
A museum devoted specifically to picture-book illustration celebrates the visual worlds of Eric Carle and other children's artists. Rotating exhibits expose original artwork and process material normally hidden behind familiar printed books.
- Access
- Seasonal or ticketed
- Museums40.5257° N, 81.4880° W
Dover, OH
Master carver Ernest "Mooney" Warther spent decades creating extraordinarily detailed working models of steam engines from wood, ivory and other materials. His workshop, family home, carvings, button collection and gardens are preserved together as a museum complex that visitors can tour during posted hours.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Museums39.8044° N, 87.4951° W
Dana, IN
Pulitzer Prize-winning war correspondent Ernie Pyle was born outside the tiny town of Dana, and his birthplace farmhouse has been preserved beside museum galleries housed in Quonset-style buildings. The exhibits focus on Pyle's reporting and the ordinary soldiers whose experiences made his wartime columns famous.
- Access
- Seasonal or ticketed
- Museums36.1301° N, 115.1747° W
Las Vegas, NV
A museum examining erotic art, sexuality, social history, and cultural taboos through rotating and permanent exhibits; adults-only policies apply.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Museums34.7340° N, 92.2735° W
Little Rock, AR
ESSE uses handbags and their contents to tell the story of 20th-century women’s lives and changing social roles. It is one of the few museums in the country built around the history of the purse.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Museums42.8474° N, 72.5666° W
Brattleboro, VT
Brattleboro once produced hundreds of thousands of reed and pipe organs under the Estey name. The museum occupies part of the old factory complex and preserves instruments, manufacturing history and machinery from a company whose organs were shipped around the world.
- Access
- Seasonal or ticketed
- Museums39.5095° N, 115.9608° W
Eureka, NV
The former Eureka Sentinel newspaper building preserves original printing presses, type, equipment, and mining-town exhibits in an unusually complete historic workspace.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Museums45.2039° N, 123.1429° W
McMinnville, OR
The enormous Hughes H-4 Hercules 'Spruce Goose' dominates a museum filled with aircraft, spacecraft and Cold War-era technology.
- Access
- Open to visitors
- Museums43.8837° N, 72.2521° W
Post Mills, VT
The late balloonist and inventor Brian Boland assembled an eccentric collection of experimental balloons, airships, machinery and aviation debris at Post Mills Airport. Public access is limited, but the surviving collection remains a remarkable monument to homemade flight and mechanical experimentation.
- Access
- Seasonal or ticketed
- Museums43.5114° N, 113.0065° W
Arco, ID
National Historic Landmark where usable electricity was first generated from nuclear power and where visitors can see early reactor technology. The museum is seasonal and remains within a controlled federal complex.
- Access
- Seasonal or ticketed
- Museums44.4201° N, 72.0199° W
St. Johnsbury, VT
Founded from Franklin Fairbanks's Victorian natural-history collection, this museum still feels like an enormous old curiosity cabinet. Tens of thousands of specimens include taxidermy, birds, insects, ethnographic material and scientific objects displayed inside an equally distinctive nineteenth-century building.
- Access
- Open to visitors