Other places that your class can visit have educational aims similar to the New England Economic Adventure's and/or cover the same historical time periods. Information on these other places is provided below. Some are close enough to the Boston Fed so that you can combine a visit to them with a visit to the Adventure. Of the attractions noted, the Gibson House in the Back Bay is the closest to the bank.

In the Immediate Area | Within the New England Region | Online Museums

In the Immediate Area

The Gibson House
Located at 137 Beacon Street between Arlington and Berkeley Streets, the Gibson House remains unique as the unspoiled residence of a well-to-do Victorian Boston family. Built in the middle of the 19th century, it has retained its kitchen, scullery, butler’s pantry, and bathrooms, as well as formal rooms and personal quarters — all filled with the Gibsons’ original furniture and personal possessions.

Guided Tours: Wednesday through Sunday at 1:00, 2:00, and 3:00 p.m.
Cost: $5.00

For secondary-school students the Gibson House offers a special tour, “Swamp to Sophistication: The Gibson House as a Microcosm of Boston’s Development.” The tour presents the physical and cultural development of the Back Bay through the context of the Gibson family and their home. The tour engages students in a discussion of how city development affects one’s way and quality of life as well as social customs and class distinctions. Students explore these topics by reading objects, participating in an activity investigating a historic room inventory, and considering issues of preservation and interpretation.

For more information or to schedule a tour, call 617-267-6338 or e-mail the Gibson House at gibsonmuseum@aol.com.

http://www.thegibsonhouse.org

Charles River Museum of Industry
The Charles River Museum of Industry is located at 154 Moody Street in Waltham, Massachusetts, at the site of the original mill of Francis Cabot Lowell, approximately ten miles west of Boston. Visitors to the museum explore the history of industry and technology and study the dynamic process of innovation. The museum seeks to encourage and inspire future innovation in America.

Says Karen LeBlanc, former museum director: “What makes this museum unique is that most of our machines and exhibits are not behind glass or ropes, and you can really feel a sense of their intricacies, their dangers.”

The web site provides a virtual tour of the first floor of the museum.
http://www.crmi.org/

Orchard House
Located at 399 Lexington Road in Concord, Massachusetts, this 300-year-old home typifies a mid-19th century middle-class home with over 80 percent of the furnishings original to the Alcotts.

General tours feature discussions of the Alcotts’ home life and accomplishments. Visitors derive a sense of how this remarkable family nurtured its members and a sense of what they contributed to the fields of literature, art, and education, and to society as a whole.

Grades 3 through 12; 10 to 45 students; 30 minutes; $4.50 per student; one chaperone per 15 students required and admitted free.
http://www.louisamayalcott.org/

Within the New England Region

American Textile History Museum
Located at 491 Dutton Street in Lowell, Massachusetts, the American Textile History Museum collects, preserves, and interprets objects and information about the design, production, and use of textiles with the aim of increasing the enjoyment and understanding of textiles in America. The museum tells America's story through the art, history, and science of its textiles.

The museum charges an admission fee but provides group rates. It has a museum shop and café.
http://www.athm.org

Tsongas Industrial History Center
Located in the Lowell National Historical Park, approximately 35 miles northwest of Boston, the Tsongas Industrial History Center allows students to learn about the American Industrial Revolution by experiencing history where it happened through hands-on activities. Students "do history" by weaving, creating a canal system and testing water wheels, working on an assembly line, role-playing immigrants, becoming inventors.

Visits, which are generally four to five hours in length, may be reserved for any date during the school year by calling the Lowell National Historical Park at 978-970-5000.
http://www.uml.edu/tsongas/index2.htm

Slater Mill Historic Site
Located in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, approximately one hour by car from Boston, the Slater Mill Historic Site allows visitors to experience the lives of mill workers in the 1830s. These mill workers were the first true "industrial" workers in America, and the site is, in effect, the birthplace of the American Industrial Revolution. Visitors view costumed staff going about their daily 19th century chores, watch raw cotton transformed to thread, view a worker’s cottage, learn about the Blackstone River and the role of waterpower, and observe life before the use of interchangeable parts.

The Slater Mill Historic Site is open from May 1 through the fall.
http://www.slatermill.org/

Museum of Work and Culture
Located in Woonsocket, Rhode Island, approximately one hour from Boston, the Museum of Work and Culture tells the story of French Canadian immigrants who left Quebec to work in the mills of Woonsocket. Visitors begin their tour at a farmhouse in rural Quebec and journey through the workday world of Woonsocket's residents from the early 20th century to the present. From the shop floor of a textile mill, to the front porch of a three-family tenement, to a church, school, and union hall, visitors are immersed in a narrative of the working class in America.

While the story is about French Canadians coming to Woonsocket, it is similar to the stories of millions of immigrants and workers in cities and towns across America.
http://www.woonsocket.org/workandculture.htm

American Precision Museum
Located in Windsor, Vermont, approximately two and one-half hours from Boston, the American Precision Museum holds the largest collection of historically significant machine tools in the nation. Housed in the original Robbins & Lawrence Armory, the museum celebrates the mechanical ingenuity of our ancestors and explores the effects of their work on our everyday lives.

The tools and methods of mass production that were pioneered at Robbins & Lawrence proved the effectiveness of a new type of manufacturing that would become known as the American System. Today, even in the age of plastics and microprocessors, the concept of precision manufacturing provides the foundation for modern industry around the world.

The American Precision Museum is open from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. daily from late May through early November.
http://www.americanprecision.org

Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor
Located within Worcester County in central Massachusetts and Providence Country in northern Rhode Island, Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor is a distinctive river valley of some 400,000 acres, 24 communities, and almost 1 million people. It was designated by Congress as a heritage corridor in order to protect and celebrate its role as the birthplace of the American Industrial Revolution. It is a cooperative effort of the National Park Service, two state governments, dozens of municipalities, and many other entities and private citizens.

With its 438-foot drop over a 46-mile length, the Blackstone River provided the waterpower for the birth of industry in America. Information on the historic, cultural, and natural resources of interest in the Blackstone River Valley is available at the web site for this historic region.
http://www.nps.gov/blac/

Shelburne Museum
Located in Shelburne Vermont, just south of Burlington and approximately four hours from Boston, the Shelburne Museum is a collection of galleries in 40-some buildings spread out over many acres. It includes a covered bridge, round barn, lighthouse, and 220-foot restored steamboat that is a National Historic Landmark. Outstanding collections of folk art, decorative arts, tools, toys, textiles, and transportation vehicles are exhibited in tandem with paintings by artists such as Monet, Manet, Cassatt, Degas, Andrew Wyeth, Thomas Cole, Winslow Homer, Grandma Moses, and many others.
http://www.shelburnemuseum.org/

Online Museums

Maine Memory Network
A project of the Maine Historical Society, this site serves as an online museum, archive, and educational resource for the state of Maine.
http://www.mainememory.net/

Connecticut History Online
A collaborative effort of the Connecticut Historical Society, the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center at the University of Connecticut, and Mystic Seaport Museum, Connecticut History Online offers a database of more than 14,000 images, drawings, and paintings that may be searched or browsed in a variety of ways, including by keyword, subject, title, and date. The collection chronicles Connecticut life from the early 19th century to the middle of the 20th century. Online learning tools created specifically for middle and high school students provide suggestions for interpreting and exploring the database.
http://www.cthistoryonline.org/

Electronic Library on Industrial History
Created by the Massachusetts Study Project at the University of Massachusetts at Boston, this site is a robust accumulation of lesson plans, projects, and activities focused on the industrial history of Massachusetts and its cities and towns. A primary case study features Fall River, but it was developed to serve as a template for other cities and towns to emulate.
https://www.quickbase.com/db/bag8evfwv?a=q&qid=10