ABOUT

HISTORY

Although the first shoemakers in Lynn settled in 1635, it was not until the eighteenth century that shoemaking emerged in the town as a family practice within a shoemaker’s house positioned on the grounds of the homestead called the ten-footer. As quality and reputation grew, so did the city’s industrial growth, which led it into the nineteenth century, making Lynn a booming shoe city, a city once called “the greatest shoe town in the country.” People flocked to Lynn to cobble together a better life in the shoe factories. By the turn of the twentieth century, Lynn had become the largest shoe-manufacturing city in the world, and the population had become an energetic and diverse mix of nationalities.

For 127 years, the Lynn Museum & Historical Society has been the repository and custodian of Lynn’s history. With nearly 10,000 objects, an extensive archive, and a priceless photography collection, the Museum chronicles Lynn’s rise from an early American settlement to an industrial powerhouse. Founded in 1897 by a group of citizens dedicated to documenting their rapidly changing city and preserving the remnants of Lynn’s colonial heritage, the Lynn Historical Society evolved over a century into the Lynn Museum.

Initially located in a residential building on Green Street, the Museum resides in the former Heritage State Park Visitor Center, a unique loft space that reflects the city’s industrial past. Its current home is ideal for the Museum to display its extensive fine art collection, photography, furniture, textiles, ephemera, archival materials, and other authentic artifacts through innovative changing exhibitions. Steeped in Lynn’s rich heritage, the Museum tells the compelling stories of manufacturing, industry, labor, abolitionism, women’s rights, and more that have shaped our nation.

In 2014, the Lynn Museum & Historical Society merged with its neighbors on Exchange Street, LynnArts, offering studio, gallery, and theatre space. Now undergoing a rebrand toward a common identity on the shared cultural campus, the Lynn Museum & Arts Center is looking forward intently. With history as our guide, we engage the region’s ever-changing community through exhibitions and programs illuminating the past, celebrating the present, and informing the future.

TOURS