History
The museum was founded in 1961 as the Philadelphia Maritime Museum by J. Welles Henderson. The museum consisted of Henderson's own personal collection and was housed in a rented room in the Athenaeum on Washington Square. Henderson founded the museum because he felt that Philadelphia's maritime history had been forgotten, and was frustrated that there wasn't a maritime museum in the city like many cities in New England had.
The museum later moved to Third and Chestnut Streets, and then moved again to Penn's Landing along the Delaware River. The museum moved to its current location at Penn's Landing in 1995, when it was renamed the Independence Seaport Museum.
In June 2007 former Independence Seaport Museum president John S. Carter pleaded guilty to charges of fraud and tax evasion from misappropriating approximately US$2.5 million in funds from the museum. He received a fifteen-year sentence in federal prison. Carter, who was president of the museum from 1989 to March 2006, was accused of using money from the museum to buy numerous personal items, including two boats, an espresso machine and a carriage house for his home in Cape Cod between 1997 and 2006.
Read more about this topic: Independence Seaport Museum
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“This above all makes history useful and desirable: it unfolds before our eyes a glorious record of exemplary actions.”
—Titus Livius (Livy)
“Don’t give your opinions about Art and the Purpose of Life. They are of little interest and, anyway, you can’t express them. Don’t analyse yourself. Give the relevant facts and let your readers make their own judgments. Stick to your story. It is not the most important subject in history but it is one about which you are uniquely qualified to speak.”
—Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966)
“If you look at the 150 years of modern China’s history since the Opium Wars, then you can’t avoid the conclusion that the last 15 years are the best 15 years in China’s modern history.”
—J. Stapleton Roy (b. 1935)