Tuesday, May 16, 2017

Please Touch Museum, Philadelphia, Part II

A continuation of yesterpost...

Back upstairs, we had fun at the Roadside Attractions area. Various mass transit and mass transport are on display, along with fun shops.

Roadside Attractions attraction

My Toddler the Bus Driver

An ice cream stand that, sadly, is fake

Scooping together

A special, temporary exhibit was "The Fantastic World of Dan Yaccarino" which ended on May 14, so it is already gone as of this post. Sorry! Yaccarino is a children's books illustrator. Both his work and other items inspired by his work were on display.

The Fantastic World of Dan Yaccarino

Drawings from "Little Boy with a Big Horn"

Story generator exhibit

Campfire in the area!

In the back corner of the museum is the Rocket Room, dedicated to things in space. My son enjoyed shooting little foam rockets in an attempt either to hit the other wall or to have the rocket fly through a rotating ring. My daughter loved being in Mission Control.

Rocket launcher

Mission controller

The ceiling and windows follow the space exploration theme.

Mobile of the planets

Sun and nine(!) planets window

Phases of the moon window

The other side of the museum houses a Dentzel Carousel. William Dentzel had a carousel in Woodside Park which he showed off to potential customers. He built several carousels over the years (there's one in Glen Echo Park in Maryland). This particular carousel has a long history, moving to Long Island and then New Jersey before being purchased by the Smithsonian Institution. In 2002, the Institution gave the carousel to the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, which loaned it to the Please Touch Museum in 2005 for restoration and use in Memorial Hall.

Our children loved riding on it. It has sixteen stationary horses on the outside row and jumping horses, rabbits, cats, pigs, and goats on the two inside rows.

Woodside Park Dentzel Carousel

Detail from the top

Toddler on a horse

Daughter on another horse

Having fun

Having more fun

Having the most fun

In the same room are some Centennial Exhibition-inspired cut outs that let our children ham it up.

Visiting the exhbition

Who is your two-headed date?!?

The museum is a lot of fun and well worth visiting, even if the Yaccarino exhibit has moved on.

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