American_Heritage_Museum

American Heritage Museum

American Heritage Museum

Military history museum in Massachusetts, United States

This article is about the museum in Stow, Massachusetts. For the museum in Palo Alto, California, see Museum of American Heritage.

The American Heritage Museum is a military history museum located on the grounds of the Collings Foundation in the town of Stow, Massachusetts, 21 miles (34 km) west of Boston. The collection consists of over 100 artifacts, most of which were formerly part of the Military Vehicle Technology Foundation collection in Portola Valley, California.[2] Over half of the items on display are from the World War II era, with World War I, the Korean War, Vietnam War, Gulf War, Iraq War, and the War on Terror also represented. Most of the items on display, including tanks and artifacts, are American, German, Russian, or British in origin.[3]

Quick Facts Established, Location ...

History

Beginning in the early 1980s and continuing for the next 20 years, Jacques Littlefield, a Stanford University graduate and former Hewlett Packard engineer, amassed a $30 million collection of military vehicles and engaged in a program of restoring many of them and giving educational tours to the public.[4][2] By the time of Littlefield's premature death in 2009,[5] his collection had expanded to over 240 vehicles.[6] In accordance with his objective of preserving the collection for the future, the Foundation donated its collection to the Collings Foundation, a non-profit educational institution founded in 1979[7] with a mission dedicated to the preservation and public display of transportation-related history. The Collings Foundation then auctioned off[8] 120 of the vehicles, netting $9.5 million[9] to fund the creation of a new 69,000-square-foot (6,400 m2)[7] museum to display the remaining 80 items in the collection at the Collings Foundation headquarters in the Boston area.[2]

Meanwhile, in August 2015, the Planning Board of the Town of Stow initially rejected the Foundation's application to build the museum,[10] questioning the propriety of locating such a large facility on land that was zoned for residential use. In its defense, the Foundation cited Massachusetts' Dover Amendment, which the Foundation believed would exempt the museum from zoning restrictions, on the grounds that its purpose would be primarily educational in nature.[11][9] Ultimately, an agreement was reached between the two parties in July 2017,[7] and construction of the museum was completed in 2018. The museum held a preview opening in October 2018[12] and had its grand opening in May 2019.[13][14][15][16]

Exhibits

Visitors are encouraged to begin their tour with the viewing of a brief introductory film, followed by the immersive walk-through of the "WWI Trench Experience" room, containing a recreation of Western Front trenches at the Battle of Saint-Mihiel, the first and only offensive launched solely by the United States Army in World War I. Visitors next enter the "War Clouds" room, which is a short movie which covers the Interwar period and the rise of Nazi Germany. Visitors then exit to the main display room of the museum, in which artifacts are arranged roughly chronologically and grouped under major campaigns and theaters of war.

The museum also includes a section of the Berlin Wall, and a September 11 memorial featuring a twisted steel beam from one of the World Trade Center towers. The steel beam was dedicated in a ceremony at the museum on September 11, 2018.[17]

The museum opened an exhibit in 2023 about the Hanoi Hilton using materials salvaged from the original building,[18][19][20]

In January 2024 a restored WWII-era Deutsche Reichsbahn rail car was dedicated in a solemn ceremony at the Museum, to become part of a growing exhibit on the Holocaust. This cattle car is of the type used to transport millions of Jewish and other persecuted groups to concentration and extermination camps between 1933 and 1945.[21]

Collection

Some of the major artifacts currently on display are as follows:[3]

Leichter Panzerspähwagen SdKfz 222 German armored scout car
M5A1 Stuart VI light tank
Volkswagen Kübelwagen Type 82 German reconnaissance car
Volkswagen Schwimmwagen Type 166 German amphibious personnel carrier
Sd.Kfz. 2 Kleines Kettenkrad German personnel carrier
StuG III Ausf. G Tank Destroyer
M16 Half Track personnel carrier
150cm Flakscheinwerfer German anti-aircraft searchlight
JB-2 Loon flying bomb (in German V-1 paint scheme)
M8 Greyhound armored car
More information Artifact, Type ...

See also

Tank museums
American military museums
Other resources

References

  1. [1]
    "Staff Directory". americanheritagemuseum.org. Retrieved April 8, 2020.
  2. [2]
    "Silicon Valley tank collection heading east to The Collings Foundation in Stow". The Springfield Republican. AP. 11 November 2013. Retrieved 11 March 2016.
  3. [3]
    "Collings Foundation American Heritage Museum Collection". 23 January 2019.
  4. [4]
    Greg Beato (26 October 2012). "A Collector's Legacy of War Machines in Repose". The New York Times. Retrieved 8 April 2019.
  5. [5]
    "Military tank collector Jacques Littlefield dies". Palo Alto Online. 14 January 2009. Retrieved 8 April 2019.
  6. [6]
    "Introduction to our Collection". Military Vehicle Technology Foundation (MVTF). Archived from the original on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 11 March 2016.
  7. [7]
    Strohl, Daniel (30 August 2018). "Last of Littlefield tank collection arrives ahead of American Heritage Museum's opening". Hemmings. Retrieved 8 April 2019.
  8. [8]
    Jordan Golson (16 July 2014). "A bunch of war buffs just dropped $10M on an arsenal of old tanks". Wired. Retrieved 8 April 2019.
  9. [9]
    Strohl, Daniel (5 August 2015). "Plans for museum to house the ex-Littlefield military vehicle collection stalled". Hemmings. Retrieved 11 March 2016.
  10. [10]
    Sweeney, Emily (31 August 2015). "Proposed military museum is voted down in Stow". The Boston Globe. Retrieved 11 March 2016.
  11. [11]
    Needle, Ann (29 July 2015). "Planning Board Wrestles with Collings Museum Application ..." The Stow Independent. Retrieved 11 March 2016.
  12. [12]
    Jeff Malachowski (4 October 2018). "Living History: The Collings Foundation will host a WWII re-enactment and veterans roundtable". Wicked Local. Archived from the original on 9 December 2018. Retrieved 5 May 2019.
  13. [13]
    Dan Guzman (3 May 2019). "90 Military Vehicles — From WWI To Today — Go On Display At New Mass. Museum". WBUR. Retrieved 5 May 2019.
  14. [14]
    Jonathan Phelps (2 May 2019). "American Heritage Museum celebrates grand opening". Worcester Telegram. Retrieved 5 May 2019.
  15. [15]
    "Bringing history to life". Community Advocate. 30 April 2019. Retrieved 5 May 2019.
  16. [16]
    Emily Greenwood (29 April 2019). "American Heritage Museum – Special Preview May 1 – Grand Opening May 2nd". Marlborough Regional Chamber of Commerce. Archived from the original on 5 May 2019. Retrieved 5 May 2019.
  17. [17]
    Jonathan Phelps (12 September 2018). "Collings Foundation in Stow dedicates 9/11 steel in new museum". The MetroWest Daily News. Archived from the original on September 12, 2018. Retrieved 8 April 2019.
  18. [18]
    "The Journey". Hanoi Hilton Exhibit. Retrieved 1 September 2023.
  19. [19]
    "The Project". Hanoi Hilton Exhibit. Retrieved 1 September 2023.
  20. [20]
    Steinmetz, Jesse (7 August 2023). "50 years after the US exited Vietnam, a new exhibit sheds light on the infamous 'Hanoi Hilton'". GBH. Retrieved 1 September 2023.
  21. [21]
    Damas, Richard (2024-01-19). "New Holocaust exhibit opens at the American Heritage Museum". Spectrum News 1. Retrieved 2024-06-04.
  22. [22]
    Pierre-Olivier (3 April 2019). "Surviving Panther Tanks" (PDF). Surviving Panzers. Retrieved 5 May 2019.
  23. [23]
    "Collecting and Restoring the Past for the Future" (PDF). National Museum of the Marine Corps. Archived from the original (PDF) on July 2, 2019. Retrieved 2 July 2019.

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