| Description |
Text from Wikipedia:
Larz Anderson Auto Museum is the oldest collection of motorcars in the United States.
The museum is a non-profit educational institution with community events, lectures, children’s programs, walking tours of the park, and an ever-changing series of exhibits on motor vehicles and the automobile's impact on society and culture.
History
The collection was begun by Larz Anderson and Isabel Weld Perkins soon after they married. In 1899 they purchased a true "horseless carriage" made by the Winton Motor Carriage Company. In the following decades, the Andersons purchased at least thirty-two new motorcars. Their collection also included twenty-four horse-drawn carriages and six sleighs.
As their cars became obsolete, the Andersons retired them to the Carriage House of their 64-acre (26 ha) estate in Greater Boston. By 1927, the Andersons opened the Carriage House for tours of their vehicles. When Isabel Anderson died in 1948, she bequeathed her entire Brookline estate (including mansion, carriage house, land and automobiles) to the Town of Brookline. She stipulated in her will that the motorcar collection be known as the "Larz Anderson Collection."
Carriage House
The Carriage House which the museum occupies was designed by the Boston architect Edmund M. Wheelwright and completed in 1889. Gigantic in scale, the building stored carriages, housed horses, and even served as home to stable staff who lived on the upper floor. Soon after the Andersons began collecting automobiles, they added a garage on the basement level for vehicle repair.
The collection
Of the original thirty-two motor vehicles, the following fourteen remain in the collection:
1899 Winton Phaeton
1900 Rochet-Schneider
1901 Winton
1903 Gardner-Serpollet
1905 Electromobile
1906 CGV
1907 Fiat
1908 Bailey
1910 Panhard et Levassor
1912 Renault
1916 Packard Twin Six
1924 Renault Torpedo
1925 Luxor Taxi
1926 Lincoln Limousine
Non-motorized transports
In addition to some of the original horse-drawn carriages and sleighs owned by the Andersons or their Weld forebears, the museum is home to the vintage bicycle collection of Dr. Ralph W. Galen, a local cycling enthusiast.
Events
The museum sponsors a variety of activities throughout the year that attract enthusiasts of specific motor vehicles from throughout the Northeastern United States, may of whom arrive in their own rare vehicles to a gathering of like-minded hobbyists.
A sampling of these events includes days devoted to American V8s, British cars, Cadillac LaSalles, Camaros and Firebirds, Corvettes, German cars, hot rods, Italian cars, Japanese motorcycles, Mercedes-Benz, Miatas, microcars & mincars, Packards and other extinct autos, Porsches and Studebakers.
The museum also attracts visitors with lectures on various subjects relating to transportation or local history, as well as musical entertainment in "The Carriage House Concert Series". |
