Post by USS Constitution Museum

Celebrating 50 years! #OnThisDay in 1976 naval historian Samuel Eliot Morison cut the ribbon to open the Museum to the public in its present facility in Charlestown Navy Yard’s Building 22. Opening the Museum at the old pump house for Dry Dock #1, located just across the pier from “Old Ironsides," Morison exclaimed: "For the Constitution’s integral part of our country, her preservation assures that as long as we prize valor and maintain a fighting Navy, as long as our eyes dance to see that banner in the skies, we should be a strong, powerful and free nation.” Since opening, the Museum has doubled in size and quadrupled in visitation with over 320,000 people visiting the Museum each year to learn, explore, and research, making it one of Boston’s most visited museums. ⚓ 🇺🇸 📷 Architect James H. Ballou’s rendering of the “Proposed USS Constitution Museum,” c. 1975, USS Constitution Museum Collection.