Baseball season is winding up, the Fourth of July is here, and Flag Day is just past. Hot dog—-the most patriotic season of the year is upon us! As if on cue, three multimillion-dollar, America-themed museums, one in each of three of our country’s early cities,are cutting the ribbon on their new, family-friendly facilities. None are more than $6, and all are made accessible to scrimpers through a just-announced air-hotel package that’s cheaper than you might imagine.
PHILADELPHIA: NATIONAL CONSTITUTION CENTER
In 1988, long before patriotism regained popularity through unexpected tragedy, Congress created the Constitutional Heritage Act. That year, you may recall, was the 200th anniversary of the document’s birth, and in a burst of pride, the government provided for the construction of a new museum to honor that venerable old parchment.
Fifteen years later, the day is about to arrive. The new National Constitution Center, the $185-million mega-museum borne of that 1988 act, opens its doors July 4 in Philadelphia’s Independence National Historical Park. Funded half by private donations and half by public monies, the NCC is non-profit and emphatically nonpartisan—-Democratic President Clinton broke ground for it in 2000 while Republican Sen. Arlen Spector has been one of its staunchest supporters.
The resulting Center is no stodgy seminar in civics. It is a fully modern take on American fundamentals, stocked with the sort of interactive you-are-there theme-park gimmicks that keep kids interested and learning. That includes the chance to take the Presidential Oath on some facsimile Capitol steps, to play a game of Supreme Court dress-up and dispense personal justice from on high, and to see a 12-minute show, “Freedom Rising,” projected on a 360-degree screen and narrated by a live actor.
InsertArt(1929602)As you might expect, a visit to the 160,000 square-foot NCC is stagecrafted to stir. At the end of their tours, people walk among 42 life-size bronze sculptures of the men who originally signed the Constitution. Then tourists may sign a version for themselves or, interestingly, they may dissent and state the reasons why. As visitors emerge from the museum, they find themselves standing before Independence Hall.
Another interesting facet of the NCC is “Participation Hall,” in which visitors are encouraged to e-mail their Congressional representatives. The museum’s slogan (“Enter as a visitor, leave as a citizen”) may be hokey, but designers seem to be making more than a token effort to engage the minds of Americans who come.
Timed tickets are required to visit, which can be obtained for $6 adults, $5 kids and seniors. Call 866/917-1787 or buy them via www.constitutioncenter.org.
WASHINGTON: CITY MUSEUM OF WASHINGTON, D.C.
On May 16 Washington, D.C., a city positively awash with history, finally got a museum about itself. Long overdue, too, since DC’s careful design and colorful history are among the most fascinating in the country, and not just because it’s the capital.
The onetime Carnegie Library, a splendid Beaux-Arts building on Mount Vernon Square (one block south of the Mr. Vernon Square/Convention Center Metro stop), got a $24 million facelift from the Historical Society of Washington, D.C. for the installation of its new showcase.
The 60,000 square-foot Museum, which is non-profit, includes permanent and changing exhibit galleries, an archeology lab, and research libraries and reading rooms that are open to the public. (Any history buff that has never explored a research room is really missing something.) Perhaps its calling card, in the touristic sense, is a huge satellite-image floor map of the entire city that’s located in the Main Gallery.
City museums sometimes struggle to survive. Washington had a city museum of sorts briefly in the late ‘80s, and so did Baltimore a decade later, but both shuttered from a lack of interest. It takes a city with powerful civic pride to support museums. Chicago’s museum is one of the country’s best, for example, while New York City has two, a historical society and a city museum, both thriving. Tourists are often surprised to find that these museums often have collections of hard-to-find artifacts that rival many national museums.
InsertArt(1929600)The City Museum has been slow in gearing up. The libraries, which are free to visit, open on Tuesday, June 17, but the exhibitions, including one on D.C.’s Chinatown, don’t begin until July. Entry to those is just $3 adults, $2 kids and seniors (add $5 adults, $4 kids to see a 22-minute
“multimedia” show about the city’s history). The archeology lab won’t open until the fall. For more information, go to www.citymuseumdc.org or call 202/383-1800.
BALTIMORE: THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER HOUSE
Taking patriotic hero worship to a whole new level, the Star-Spangled Banner Flag House opened in 1927 to honor Mary Young Pickersgill, the Betsy Ross copycat who made the enormous flag that inspired Francis Scott Key to write the poem that later became our national anthem. That somewhat circuitous intellectual path has been bridged with a new $4 million expansion that turns an old museum into a newfangled tourist attraction honoring Old Glory and revisiting one of the most harrowing wars America ever faced.
The actual flag under discussion still hangs, sometimes by a thread, inside the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History in Washington, but a sort of approximation of the original thing has been built into a 30-by-42 foot window just built onto the Baltimore museum.
Nearby, Pickersgill’s house remains in situ, but inside the expansion, the focus is on not only the making of the famous banner, but also on the War of 1812, that dimly remembered American-British conflict for which it was sewn.
The flashy new museum opens to the public on Friday, June 13. Just in time, too, since Flag Day is Saturday, June 14.
The Flag House’s new 12,600-square-foot space costs $5 adults, $4 seniors over 65, and $3 if you’re under 18. The museum is a few blocks from Baltimore’s Inner Harbor in the Jonestown (Little Italy) district. More information: 410/837-1793, www.flaghouse.org.
A CAPITAL PACKAGE
Just in time for summer, Southwest Airlines Vacations has inaugurated (pun intended) packages to the American capital. Deals come in air/hotel or air/car versions (with hotel-only add-ons available). Baltimore is about an hour away, and Philadelphia is roughly another hour further from that, so
all three can be seen on the same excursion to Washington. (In fact, Southwest’s flights go into Baltimore/Washington, located between the two cities.)
The airline’s vacations wing is selling its packages at a lower-than-normal introductory price, as long as purchases are made by Thursday, June 19. Travel may be undertaken June 15 to June 30 or July 7 to Aug 24.
Based on Monday or Tuesday departures with double occupancy, two-night stays in Washington, DC, at the Radisson Barcelo (a 301-room hotel near the restaurants of charming Dupont Circle) cost $204 each from Albany or Manchester; $209 each from Providence; $264 each from Tampa; and $334 each from Houston (Hobby). That includes round-trip airfare on Southwest Airlines (other departure cities are available for prices that look a lot like that; longer stays are also an option). You may also stay at the 529-room Holiday Inn Capitol (a block from the National Air and Space Museum) for $10 more. Make sure you book at least four days before departure if you want the lowest available price.
Southwest Airlines has also launched similarly priced packages to Chicago. For more information on those, and to book either city, customers may visit www.swavacations.com. They can also just call at 800/243-8372.
Copyright © 2003 Newsweek Budget Travel, Inc.
Jason Cochran is senior editor of Arthur Frommer’s Budget Travel magazine. In the past four years, he has visited over 50 countries and 30 American states. To send him e-mail, click here.