Sean Marshall

Tag: Museum

  • Transit museums’ transit dilemma

    The Pennsylvania Trolley Museum now features a new main entrance and exhibition hall, along with an on-street boarding area complete with vintage signage.

    While visiting Pittsburgh earlier in June, I also paid a second visit to the Pennsylvania Trolley Museum (PTM), located 45 minutes south of Downtown Pittsburgh in Washington PA. I had visited the museum a few years prior as part of a visit to the Pittsburgh area, but since then, a new section of the museum opened to the public, and there were additional cars in operation.

    While I went to PTM with a friend who planned to stick around until the evening, I planned to return to downtown Pittsburgh earlier in the afternoon. I found information on a local transit service operated by Washington County — called Freedom Transit — that ran a route to and from Pittsburgh that stopped not too far from the museum’s main entrance. That plan did not go well at all.

    It is an unfortunate irony that most North American transit museums have poor or non-existent transit access. There are historical reasons why this came to be, but some of the continent’s best transportation exhibitions are inaccessible to newer generations of transit fans, historians, and enthusiasts, many of which do not or cannot drive.

    Washington County Transportation Authority, or “Freedom Transit,” doesn’t offer much freedom
    (more…)

  • An exciting future for Old City Hall

    IMG_8119-002Activist New York exhibition, Museum of the City of New York, January 2015

    During my last visit to New York City, in January 2015, I visited the Museum of the City of New York. I spent several hours exploring the museum, which is dedicated to telling the story of the city and its inhabitants. The exhibit that fascinated me the most was a temporary exhibition called “Activist New York” which covered everything from campaigns for and against religious tolerance in the 1600s to the struggles for LGBT rights in the last several decades. With rich and trying history of human rights struggles in our city, I felt that this is exactly the type of exhibition that would fit a potential City of Toronto Museum.

    osgoode-oasis_30887205805_oOld City Hall’s clocktower overlooks Nathan Phillips Square and Osgoode Hall

    With new plans for Old City Hall currently being studied, the dream of a civic museum worthy of the City of Toronto is one step closer to reality. With provincial courts due to vacate E.J. Lennox’s Richardsonian Romanesque masterpiece, the City of Toronto is looking to re-purpose the building for new public and private uses, including a new enclosed courtyard. Retail and commercial uses — such as shops, cafes, educational spaces and offices — would be sympathetic to the historic structure. But the highlight is a proposed 100,000 square foot museum, comparable in size to that in New York.

    https://twitter.com/Sean_YYZ/status/801209680060182529

    There’s still the risk that City Council won’t approve a new museum, which would be expensive to build and may not, in itself, be a money-maker. But as a city-building initiative, it’s necessary, like a new major downtown park.

    I attended the public consultation meeting at Metro Hall last night; I wrote more about it in Torontoist.