Imagination Station is a children's interactive science museum located in downtown Wilson, North Carolina at 224 East Nash Street. It is housed in the former Wilson Federal Building which served as a post office with a federal courthouse of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina from its construction in 1928. One of the former courtrooms serves as the "Science Courtroom", a classroom used for science demonstrations.
Timeline:
1989 Science Museums of Wilson Inc, Imagination Station is founded
1990 Bill F. Streeter becomes the museums first Executive Director
1991 Vincent D. Adkins becomes the museums first Exhibits Manager and Builder
1992 Imagination Station Science Museum Opens To The Public
1994 Jim Henley becomes the museums second Executive Director
1995 Joe Harden becomes interim Executive Director
1996 Todd Boyette becomes the museums third Executive Director
1999 Jerry Reynolds becomes the museums fourth Executive Director
2000 Tropical Trek Exhibit on the museums second floor catches on fire and damages the building
2002 Imagination Station Re-Opens in its original location after operating in another building for two years
2003 Karl L. McKinnon becomes the museums fifth Executive Director.
2007 Jonathan Brooks becomes the museums sixth Executive Director.
2009 North Carolina Museum of The Coastal Plain opens on the third floor of Imagination Station.
The museum offers outreach programs with their "Science on Wheels" which brings science exhibits to area schools.
In the early 2000s, a fire at the building prompted a move to a smaller temporary location four blocks north. The museum has since moved back.
Famous quotes containing the words imagination, station, science and/or museum:
“Only in men’s imagination does every truth find an effective and undeniable existence. Imagination, not invention, is the supreme master of art as of life.”
—Joseph Conrad (1857–1924)
“When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“After science comes sentiment.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“The Museum is not meant either for the wanderer to see by accident or for the pilgrim to see with awe. It is meant for the mere slave of a routine of self-education to stuff himself with every sort of incongruous intellectual food in one indigestible meal.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)