Raynham Hall Reopening

By Niall Fitzgerald

Raynham Hall Museum will be re-opening to the public with an inaugural event on Independence Day, July 4th, with free admission and a free concert by the Oyster Bay Music Festival, a classical music festival featuring highly talented and prize-winning young artists.

The Museum's re-opening and inauguration of its new Education Center will kick-off with a concert titled "Music that Celebrates" followed by an open-house with tours of the newly "re-imagined" museum and new education center in small groups throughout the event.

"We took the opportunity to shut down, to regroup, and to re-imagine what the museum could be, and we now present our newly-completed exhibition and education center, and several newly-interpreted rooms in our historic museum building," said Harriet Gerard Clark, Raynam Hall's Executive Director.

Visitors to the Education Center will see a newly-created diorama of Oyster Bay in May of 1779, when the British Rangers left town, having cut down the Townsend orchard to build a fort on what is now known as Fort Hill. There will also be entertainment by a smart phone-based augmented reality app, known as "Digital Tapestry," created under the auspices of the Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation, which features animated 18th-century-style portraits.

Raynham Hall recently completed its multi-year building restoration project featuring the adaptive re-use of an adjacent building to the museum as an Education Center.

Raynham Hall was the home of Robert Townsend, a Revolutionary War spy for George Washington, and welcomes nearly 10,000 visitors annually, including some 5,000 fourth-graders who come on field trips as part of their studies of the Revolutionary War.

“We are grateful for our partnerships with the Town of Oyster Bay... and many others who have so generously supported our endeavor to share Long Island’s rich history with the public,” said Clark.