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    Ephraim McDowell House and Apothecary

    4.2 (5 reviews)
    Closed 10:00 am - 4:00 pm

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    Great American Dollhouse Museum

    Great American Dollhouse Museum

    4.9
    (22 reviews)
    0.5 mi

    Wonderful place to explore with kids and escape the heat. The exhibits are very detailed.read more

    I've visited miniatures museums all over the U.S., and this is by far my favorite one. What I loved…read moreabout it: * The stories. The museum is divided into 4 sections (history, a small town circa 1900, a replica of nearby Shaker Village, and a fantasy section), and the curator has written brief storylines and fun facts for each dollhouse. So you're not just looking at standalone houses like in most dollhouse museums. Instead, you're following a narrative. And the curator has done a great job with these; they're really interesting. She staged a standard 19th century dollhouse as an Underground Railroad station, with an escaped slave doll climbing into an attic and another hiding in a closet while the white dolls hurry to greet a visitor. * The humor. The curator has staged delightful scenes. One dollhouse has an overwhelmed nanny outside while inside you see scenes of chaos - struck matches, a boy dying eggs and the cat. Another has a bride fretting over being late to her own reception while at the reception hall, the servers gossip and complain in the kitchen. * The creativity and incredible detail. There are scenes here I've never seen portrayed in a miniatures museum. In tribute to local history, there's a tobacco warehouse and a coal mine surrounded by miners' shacks and a company store (along with info on the harsh conditions of the workers in real life). The town area has a bad part of town, with empty stores that have decaying fronts and ones that have upper floor tenement apartments with residents living in small spaces and doing laundry and sewing for a living. There's a sweatshop with female dolls hunched over sewing machines and male dolls in suits lounging in an office. * The racial and socioeconomic diversity. Dollhouse and miniatures museums usually show only white dolls in fancy houses. I never thought about this until I saw the diversity of the dolls here. When I complimented the curator on this, she said it's something they're very intentional about while also trying to be realistic about the time period. So the early 1900-era dollhouses show black people mostly as servers and nannies, but there's also a freeman living on a small farm with his family. And the Shaker Village replica has lots of black dolls because the Shakers believed in racial equality and welcomed escaped and freed slaves. There's also a modern bougie scene of a pool and patio, and a black woman and her daughter are lounging beside it. * The size. This museum is huge. I spent 3 full hours there. * The thoughtful layout. There are benches and chairs throughout the exhibits for when you need a break. The layout is curving and has a great cave-like tunnel entrance to the fantasy area that must delight kids. * The array and quality of the miniatures and scenes.

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    Social History...in miniature.
    Social History...in miniature.
    Great American Dollhouse Museum
    Great American Dollhouse Museum

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    Ephraim McDowell House and Apothecary - museums - Updated August 2026

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