Charles River Museum of Industry & Innovation is a museum located near the intersection of the Charles River and what is now Moody Street in Waltham, Massachusetts. The building was originally built as part of the Boston Manufacturing Company, Francis Cabot Lowell's first textile mill. The mill has now been converted into housing and artist lofts, with the museum taking up only a small portion of the previous mill building.
The site is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as America's first factory. (Though many mills existed before the Boston Manufacturing Company, Francis Cabot Lowell's mill was the first to combine all steps of cotton fabric manufacturing under one roof.)
Waltham received a $10 million urban revitalization grant, which allowed the site to be renovated and preserved. As part of the site’s renovation, a group of cultural, civic, and business leaders created the Charles River Museum of Industry & Innovation in what had been the mill’s massive steam-powered engine and boiler rooms. Following a monumental campaign of fundraising, cleaning, building, planning, and installation, the museum began operation in 1980.
The museum is a nonprofit corporation governed by a Board of Trustees, and funded by private donations.
The mission of the Charles River Museum of Industry & Innovation is to encourage and inspire future innovation in America. The museum accomplishes this through its collections and programs, by exploring the historical impact of industry on American culture, by examining the dynamic process of innovation, by promoting its location in Waltham as a foundation of the American industrial revolution, by connecting the expertise of older generations with the inquisitiveness of young people, and by providing audiences of all ages with an engaging museum experience.
Core exhibits cover the area's role in the American Industrial Revolution, though the museum also has a dedicated gallery of the Waltham Watch Company. The museum includes two revolving exhibit spaces that change out anywhere from 3–6 months, covering anything from science and math to cultural investigation. The museum also hosts many events and festivals in the Waltham area, and was the first to host Steampunk City, which was the first steampunk festival to encompass an entire town.
Famous quotes containing the words river, museum and/or industry:
“Every incident connected with the breaking up of the rivers and ponds and the settling of the weather is particularly interesting to us who live in a climate of so great extremes. When the warmer days come, they who dwell near the river hear the ice crack at night with a startling whoop as loud as artillery, as if its icy fetters were rent from end to end, and within a few days see it rapidly going out. So the alligator comes out of the mud with quakings of the earth.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Soaked by the sparkling waters of America.”
—Hawaiian saying no. 2740, ‘lelo No’Eau, collected, translated, and annotated by Mary Kawena Pukui, Bishop Museum Press, Hawaii (1983)
“For almost seventy years the life insurance industry has been a smug sacred cow feeding the public a steady line of sacred bull.”
—Ralph Nader (b. 1934)