Port Jefferson: Long Island Museum

Even though we have visited Long Island a few times, we actually have never visited the LI Museum. As it turned out, they were between exhibits in the main museum areas and doing some renovating, so only the Carriage museum was open to the public. Because the whole museum was not available, the entrance fee was waived. The carriage museum shares the history of transportation before the automobile.

The carriages are house in a large building which has 3 floors. Most if not all are real carriages and vehicles that were donated to the museums. They are not replicas. I found that to be really neat as often items, larger items like these are lost or in terrible shape.]

There were all kinds of carriages spanning over the course of a couple centuries and it was really interesting to see how different carriages were used for different occasions. I have read many stories taken place in the 1800 and 1900s so it was nice to see how my imagination match or didn’t match the actually vehicles.

My favorites were the sleighs! Wouldn’t it be fun to go on a sleigh ride on a wintery day?

This fancy firetruck below was really incredible. It was used in parades.

You can tell the difference between a fire truck used in reality versus the parade one below: one is really just merely decor!

One last one to share: while many carriages displayed were used by middle and upper class, this was one donated from a prince in Europe. I do not remember which country, but it was from a small country near Germany if I recall correctly (might have been Bavaria though).

We enjoyed the grounds of the museum too. There is a schoolhouse and a couple other buildings in pretty good shape as well as an old, small cemetery.

We definitely enjoyed our visit. We weren’t too upset that the other parts of the museum were not opened to the public even though we enjoy the occasional art museum.

A bientôt!

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