American Swedish Historical Museum
Introduction
Text-to-speech Audio
Images
A view of the museum.
Backstory and Context
Text-to-speech Audio
Sweden’s first contact with America was in 1638, when settlers landed on the shore of Delaware. Almost 300 years later, in the 1920’s, Swedish Americans were planning to find a way to properly celebrate the tercentenary of this landing on American shores in 1638. A group of prominent Swedish-Americans assembled, and in 1926, the Swedish-American Sesquicentennial Association was formed, which put a plan to construct a Swedish Museum in motion. After securing land given in a grant by Swedish Queen Christina in 1653, the Swedish Crown Prince Gustav VI Adolf visited America and laid the cornerstone of the Museum on June 2, 1926.
Construction of the Museum began quickly, modeling portions
of it after a Swedish mansion and George Washington’s home. Construction of the
Museum was nearly complete by 1927, but the Great Depression hit fast and hard,
slowing construction nearly to a halt. Construction went slowly for a long
period of time, but in 1938, the year of the tercentenary of the Swedish
landing in America, the committee pushed forward with construction, finishing
the Museum in time for the tercentenary celebrations. The Museum was opened and
dedicated on June 28, 1938, and has remained so ever since, despite facing
financial difficulty over the years. Today, the Museum continues to serve its
mission of sharing Swedish and Swedish American culture through its twelve permanent
exhibits, as well as its research library, the Nord Library.