Hampton Roads Naval Museum
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The Hampton Roads Naval Museum is an official U.S. Navy museum that interprets the history of the Navy in Hampton Roads, Virginia.
The museum’s permanent exhibits include material on the Battle off the Virginia Capes (1781), the Civil War in Hampton Roads, the Great White Fleet, World War II and the Cold War. Museum holdings are strong in the areas of naval prints, ship models and underwater archaeology. The Hampton Roads Naval Museum is the official repository of the remains of two Civil War shipwrecks: USS Cumberland and CSS Florida.
The museum opened in 1979 in the historic Pennsylvania House on the Norfolk Naval Station. This building, a replica of Independence Hall, is one of the state pavilions remaining from the 1907 Jamestown Exposition, a world's fair. A major effort during the museum’s tenure at Pennsylvania House was the 1984 installation of a large exhibit on the Civil War in Hampton Roads.
In the 1980s the city of Norfolk, Virginia invited the museum to relocate to a new downtown maritime center. The Navy accepted the offer, and in 1994 the Hampton Roads Naval Museum opened in Nauticus National Maritime Center, as the maritime center building is called. With the move, the museum’s exhibits doubled in size.
In 2000 the museum undertook management of the battleship USS Wisconsin, which was berthed next to Nauticus that year and opened to the public on April 16, 2001.
Special temporary exhibits in recent years have included Animals and the US Navy, Cuba Libre: The Spanish-American War in the Caribbean and Pax Americana: The US Navy in the Era of Violent Peace. The museum also offers guided tours, a lecture series, and educational programs. An active volunteer corps participates in all museum functions. A reference library, archive and photographic collection specializing in regional naval material are open to the public by appointment.
[edit] External Links & Contact Information
1 Waterside Dr. STE 248 Norfolk, Virginia 23510-1607 Tel: 757-322-2987 Fax: 757-445-1867 Information on hours and programming is available at the museum's web site: [1].
