Museum of History and Industry - 2nd Floor (part 1)

It certainly seems like I could have spent an entire day on the first floor, but that would have mostly just been standing in the middle of the atrium, looking around at all the things you can see from the floor, the high ceilings, the well-designed exhibit fronts... The second floor, though, I think you could *actually* spend a day going through everything. That's where we spent most of our time, and where I realized we'd already been there for three hours!

So now, let's venture upstairs. You saw in yesterday's post the cool staircase that goes up to the second, third, and fourth floors. There's also a glass elevator that I have a feeling would be extremely cool. You could look at all the exhibits as you approach or depart from them. I, though, wouldn't have the guts to ride in that thing. It's one thing when the walls are glass and you can see through them. That's no problem. It's a completely different thing when you can see through the floor, too. Instead, I admired it from a sturdy floor... even though that made me a little disoriented, too. But I did watch the gears as the elevator made its rounds, which was cool.

Okay, so let's go up to the second floor. This is where the main historical exhibits are. From Native Americans to the Denny expedition to a growing city, railroads, gold rush... Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition to World War I to Depression... Prohibition, WPA, World War II... suburbia, civil unrest, technology industry, the world stage... this floor is where everything about "history" is.

There are some pretty cool things on the second floor, and lots more interactive fun. There's a display about the different languages of place names around western Washington (Native American, Spanish, Russian, "American"); a game where kids can watch a video and help "build" a railroad (which is a VERY LOUD game... I recommend either having earplugs, or going quickly through that area); and a "game" about the Red Scare, among other interactive activities.

Another thing MOHAI totally got right was the interactive moments that will remain after the visitors leave. Sure, it's fun to make signs light up or to build a railroad, but the Shaping Our City exhibit on the first floor actually leaves something with the museum; in this case, the statistics of people's answers to the questionnaires. On the second floor, in the Seattle By Design area, there's a little nook with a sign that says "How would you redesign the city?" and Post-It notes and pencils so people can leave their thoughts. Even by 1 o'clock-ish on opening day, there were lots of notes already. I don't know what the museum's going to do with all these, but I hope they're saving them. Maybe pull them out in 50 years and put on display of "Here's what people in 2012 wanted the city to look like. What ideas really happened? Which sound ridiculous now? Which ones would you still like to see happen?"

The towers on the second floor are The Microsoft Story, Seattle's World's Fairs, Boeing Takes Off, and Personal Stories. The Seattle's World's Fairs tower is pretty cool because it puts the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition and the 1962 World's Fair back-to-back. The only bad thing is that it's in a tower, which is sort of like a walk-in closet, so there's not a lot of room for stuff or room to move around. But I do like the idea of them being together.

The Personal Stories tower is the one above the Shaping Our City tower and features oral histories from notable people, or from local people about notable events. Again, the exhibit is interactive. There are three listening/watching stations, and at each one, you touch the screen to select the era you want to explore, then select the photo of the person whose interview you want to listen to. I kind of loved this tower, given my recent foray into transcribing (and attempting to plan) oral histories. It made me feel warm and fuzzy about the work I've been doing, and also reaffirmed some questions I've been having (For example, different oral history style guides approach dialect and slang like "cuz"/"'cause"/"because" differently. The two MOHAI interviews I saw transcribed the shortened version of "because" as "'cause," so that contradicts one style guide I read, but confirms the way I've been doing them. That made me happy -- if it's good enough for MOHAI, it's good enough for me!).

Paul Allen interview in Personal Stories tower

Whew! I don't know about you, but I'm getting tired. I think we need to take a little break. Oh, look! There are lots of places to sit! There are couches in the Getting Started area, the Visions area, the World City area, and an interactive display where you can sit in the Changes area, not to mention a theater with seats and a couple of sit-and-watch exhibits in the Walker Gallery. Plus, another set of bathrooms. Let's say we sit for a little while, and we'll reconvene tomorrow to continue with the second floor.