The Wrightsville Beach Museum is designed to reflect how life was lived in a typical home on the Beach and throughout the community.  One room of the Museum is dedicated to the display of various exhibits pertaining to the area's history.  In addition to the displays in this room, visitors can view an oral history video, where longtime residents reminisce about the "good old days".

An Afternoon with Henry Jay MacMillan
Sunday, October 2, 2011, 2-6PM

The Museum invites you to an intimate afternoon as we view seldom-seen works by Henry Jay MacMillan from private collections.  Visit the Wrightsville Beach Museum of History as art experts, family, and local friends of Henry Jay MacMillan share observations on his work and reminiscences of his life.  Pieces from private, local collections will be shared during this afternoon event.  Light refreshments on the porch.  (More Info)  Read the Lumina News article or the Encore article!

"Wish You Were Here!" Postcard Exhibit

This summer, the Wrightsville Beach Museum of History is proud to unveil the latest of our rotating exhibits "Wish You Were Here!"  Postcards of Wrightsville Beach.  The exhibit runs into the fall months and will include postcards from the early twentieth century.  Come see how the growth and evolution of the town and its landmarks are depicted on the cards in our collection. 

  
Postcards shown above are from Elaine Henson's private collection.

In the early twentieth century, long before the wave of development in communication technology, postcards were not only a way of sharing your vacation experiences with friends and family, but perhaps the best and only way of doing so.  Postcards, as they do now, displayed beautiful images of the landmarks and resorts as well as aerial views of towns or cities.  In our collection are spectacular views of the Lumina Pavilion, Oceanic Hotel, Seashore Hotel, the trolley system, and the piers, among other historic areas and landmarks of Wrightsville Beach.

Join us to learn about the history and development of the modern postcard and see examples from the various eras of postcard history.  Through the images and letters on the cards, life on Wrightsville Beach for vacationers and residents alike becomes remarkably clear.

Wrightsville's Rooms with a View:  A History of Accommodations in Postcards
Thursday, August 11, 2011
To complement the Museum's summer exhibit, "Wish You Were Here!" Elaine Blackmon Henson will give a program covering the places that tourists have stayed over the last 100 years at Wrightsville Beach - from the grand hotels at the turn of the 20th century to the motels of the 1980s.  We will see them through the postcards that visitors sent back home.  Mrs. Henson has images of guest houses, motels, motor inns, and hotels/resorts.  Some of these places are still here.  Some have changed greatly, some very little.  Some are long gone. 

Beachfront Model

Couples dance at Lumina to the music of Benny Goodman.  A young lady emerges from the bathhouse sporting her new bathing suit.  The trolley stops, dropping off its first passenger of the day to Wrightsville Beach.

These images, along with the sun, sand, and ocean, come to life in the museum's centerpiece--a twelve foot model of Wrightsville Beach circa 1910.  Displayed are replications of Lumina, the bathhouse, a working trolley car, Station One, Little Chapel on the Boardwalk, and the museum cottage in its original location.  The construction of this model is due to the skill and craftsmanship of Maricam Kaleel of Model Makers and Bill Creasy made the original model possible.  More recent additions were done by Jon Michael and Ted O'Quinn.

The Kitchen In the early twentieth century American kitchens, the dominant color was white. Walls were frequently covered with white ceramic tile or painted with white enamel paint, as were the furniture and all the woodwork. The ideal kitchen sink was porcelain enameled on cast iron, also in white. For cooking, the convenience and cleanliness of gas stoves took preference in households, as in this kitchen. Displayed here are pieces of china from the Oceanic Hotel, which burned down in the Great Fire of 1934, samples of previous linoleum flooring, and a ceiling fan salvaged after Hurricane Hazel, from the nearby Hanover Inn. The Porch Dining was frequently enjoyed outdoors on the porch to take advantage of the cool summer breezes at Wrightsville Beach.  The porch was also the place where the icebox was kept, for easy disposal of the melted ice. Here, perishables such as butter, milk, and meats were stored. The icebox was introduced in the 1860's, and in thirty years became a household necessity. It remained the primary food storage appliance until the introduction of the monitor-top refrigerator in 1927. Iceboxes were available in various sizes, ranging from a twenty-five pound to a hundred pound ice block capacity. The trolley brought routine deliveries of ice from Wilmington to the inhabitants of Wrightsville Beach to keep the icebox in working order. The Bedroom In a turn of the century beach cottage bedroom, the theme was simplicity.  Pictured here is the jailhouse bed retrieved from the servant's quarters at the house's original location. The Bathroom During the early decades of the nineteenth century, bathing was not a regular practice.  Indoor plumbing did begin to emerge in the 1830's but usually only in the homes of the wealthy.  Bathrooms only became a commonplace feature in the American home after the Civil War due to the rise of industrialization and new ideas on sanitation and cleanliness. By the 1890's, the American bathroom had developed the general equipment and arrangement that characterize today's bathroom. Standard fixtures included a bath or shower, a toilet, and a wash basin. Designs were kept simple, for the stress was on the utilitarian function of the bathroom. By the early 1900's white fixtures in the bathroom was the trend. Pictured here were typical fixtures of early twentieth century bathrooms--the free standing, single pedestal sink and claw footed tub.