Oval Shaker Boxes, Mount Lebanon, New York, c 1840

Period Rooms and Furniture Collection

The furniture collections at the American Museum are showcased in period room settings to help make impressions of the past more vividly alive. Display rooms include a late 17th century Puritan home, an 18th century tavern and a sumptuous New Orleans bedroom from about 1860 – the eve of the Civil War.

The museum’s Shaker furniture is celebrated throughout the world. The Shakers arrived in America only a few years before the Revolution. Mother Ann’s teachings shaped all aspects of Shaker daily life, including the design of village furniture. She advocated that each thing, spiritual or otherwise, should be made: “plain and simple … unembellished by any superfluities”.  The linear elegance of the Shaker pieces at the American Museum reflects this founding principle of strength through simplicity.