The History Museum at the Castle

After restraining ourselves and staying in on Saturday for the whole day, we were ready to explore on Sunday…oh, and our Groupon to the “Houdini Museum” was about to expire. We’d been looking forward to seeing the Houdini exhibit at the History Museum at the Castle after hearing about it from a friend so we grabbed the audiobook of the The Magic Treehouse: Hurry Up Houdini! to listen to on the drive and jumped in the car.

The Castle

How can you go wrong with a museum in a building called the castle? P said it looked like Hogwarts. I can see why. It was originally a Masonic temple. The building is gorgeous. Beautiful tile floors, big fireplaces and staircases with wooden banisters certainly made me feel like I was walking into history or at the very least, a storybook.

If your visit involves children, I recommend starting on the lowest level and working your way up, saving the AKA Harry Houdini exhibit for last. We started at the top with Houdini. Once we were done with the magic of Houdini, my son had zero interest in the more traditional museum exhibits on the lower floors. I missed both the Edna Ferber and Joseph McCarthy  exhibits all together and had to listen to him repeatedly hissing “You’re torturing me!” through the ones I did get to see.

AKA Houdini

We climbed the X staircase and entered the exhibit area. I tried reading the gorgeously appealing exhibit panels with P but after about 10 minutes he was off to do stuff. Did you know Harry Houdini isn’t even from Appleton? And that’s not his real name? I guess he really was a master of illusion!

There were so many hands-on exhibits, it was great. P skipped from one to the next, that is while he wasn’t watching other children “perform”. There were sideshow activities, escaping from jail, locks to pick, fun-house mirrors, straight jackets and levitating tables. In short, P was in heaven.

The Rest of the Museum (or come back without the kids if you really want to enjoy it)

• The Food: Who We Are and What We Eat exhibit features the history of food in the Fox Valley. I thoroughly enjoyed everything from supper clubs to sturgeon. I only wish I could have enjoyed it more thoroughly…ahem. P did really enjoy the dairy challenge? He did it repeatedly until he got all the answers right. There were also hand on activities for kids throughout this exhibit. P was ready to go home and not interested in doing any of them though.
• The Tools of Change exhibit in the lower level was a super cool look at careers and work through history in the Fox Valley. This is the last exhibit we walked through and truthfully we didn’t give it enough time. There were historic replicas like a  newspaper printing department, a doctor’s office, and a bank. All of them were interactive in some way.
• Stained glass windows illustrating Fox Valley history wrap around a big room on the main floor. Surprisingly, I was actually able to see them and read the information because I squeezed that in before seeing the Houdini exhibit.

I’m glad we took an afternoon to check out a museum new to us. We’ll certainly return to enjoy the high quality exhibits at the History Museum at the Castle again, but you know what? The best part was listening to the audiobook together and talking about what we might see and then what we did see while driving there and back. I love those stolen moments in the car with my son.

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