Two Seasonal Museums to Visit

It may be only mid-August, but the fall will be here much sooner than you think! And when mid-October comes rolling along, many of the museums in the Valley will close. The Porter-Phelps-Huntington Museum is one, but I've written enough about them for now! Two others I want to highlight are the Hadley Farm Museum and the Skinner Museum.

The Hadley Farm Museum is located at the intersection of Routes 9 and 47 in Hadley (behind the town hall and Congregational church). This 1780s barn, built by Charles Phelps, was moved (not taken apart, but literally lifted up and moved) in the 20th century from the site of the PPH museum to its current location. James Huntington, owner of the house and first director of the museum, needed money and sold it. It's an amazing piece of 18th-century contstruction housing all kinds of farm equipment.

The Skinner Museum in South Hadley (51 College Street), owned and run by Mount Holyoke College, is an interesting cabinet-of-curiousities-type museum housed in an old Congregational church that came from one of the four Quabbin Towns. I thought it was Dana, but I read recently online that it came from Prescott. I'll have to double-check sometime by visiting and will amend this then.

The museum houses the collection of Joseph Skinner, a wealthy industrialist, whose family was prominent in the area in the late-19th and early-20th centuries. My grandfather had some interesting stories about him! Skinner traveled the world and amassed an interesting and eclectic array of goods. Everything from early American furniture to suits of armor to paraphernalia from Nazi Germany. It's definitely worth a visit.

There are a couple of buildings on the site of the Skinner Museum. I remember being told by one of the docents that one of the buildings holds Skinner's collection of birds, including a passenger pigeon (now extinct), but I've never been in there and so can't confirm.