Browse Museums

Art, History

Botanical Garden, Culture, General, History, Historic House

Tour the site where Joseph Glidden invented and first manufactured the most widely used type of barbed wire. View demonstrations of the blacksmith craft in the Phineas Vaughan Blacksmith Shop. Both the 1861 home and brick barn are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Regional History Center

DeKalb, Illinois

History, University

Ellwood House Museum

DeKalb, Illinois

Art, History

Estate of Isaac Ellwood, principal manufacturer of barbed wire. Museum offers guided tours of the 30-room Ellwood mansion with restored interiors with original furnishings spanning the decades 1880s-1920s. Large visitor center with exhibit galleries including the carriage gallery and "Fencing Frontiers: The Barbed Wire Story"; yearly special exhibits.

Guided tours offered at 1PM and 3PM Tuesday-Friday and 1PM, 2PM and 3PM Saturday-Sunday. Visitor Center open noon-4:30PM Tuesday thru Sunday.

Museum sponsors variety of educational programs for children and adults; "Art at Ellwood" Art Fair in July; Holiday Event in December.

NIU Anthropology Museum

DeKalb, Illinois

Anthropology, Archaeology, Culture, History, Library, Science, University

The Anthropology Museum houses over 12,000 ethnographic and archaeological objects. The ethnographic collection has regional strengths in Southeast Asia, New Guinea, and the plains and southwest regions of North America. Ethnographic specimens from Africa, Mesoamerica, and South America are also represented.