The Crawford Auto-Aviation Museum is a transportation museum in

Cleveland Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U ...

Ohio Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The s ...

, United States. It is part of the

Western Reserve Historical Society The Western Reserve Historical Society (WRHS) is a historical society in Cleveland, Ohio. The society operates the Cleveland History Center, a collection of museums in University Circle. The society was founded in 1867, making it the oldest cu ...

's Cleveland History Center in University Circle, and its collection includes about 170 cars. It was founded by Frederick C. Crawford of TRW, and opened in 1965.

Collections

As of 2019 there were more than 170 automobiles, 12 aircraft, 3 antique carriages, and 21 non-car artifacts (motorcycles, boats and bicycles). The facility includes more than of archival collections. The aviation collection includes a

P-51 Mustang The North American Aviation P-51 Mustang is an American long-range, single-seat fighter and fighter-bomber used during World War II and the Korean War, among other conflicts. The Mustang was designed in April 1940 by a team headed by James ...

racing plane used in Thompson Trophy Races. The oldest car in the collection is an 1897

Panhard Panhard was a French motor vehicle manufacturer that began as one of the first makers of automobiles. It was a manufacturer of light tactical and military vehicles. Its final incarnation, now owned by Renault Trucks Defense, was formed ...

et Levassor, while later acquisitions include the first production DeLorean from 1981 and a

self-driving car A self-driving car, also known as an autonomous car, driver-less car, or robotic car (robo-car), is a car that is capable of traveling without human input.Xie, S.; Hu, J.; Bhowmick, P.; Ding, Z.; Arvin, F.,Distributed Motion Planning for S ...

named DEXTER which was team Team Case's entry in the DARPA Urban Challenge 2007, in which it placed in the top 20. Other vehicles in the collection include '' Tinkerbelle'', a small sailboat in which Robert Manry solo sailed across the

Atlantic Ocean The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's five oceans, with an area of about . It covers approximately 20% of Earth's surface and about 29% of its water surface area. It is known to separate the "Old World" of Africa, Europe ...

in 1965. Manry donated it to the Historical Society in 1967. In 2016, the museum's 1913 ALCO Model Six Berline Limousine won the

Ansel Adams Ansel Easton Adams (February 20, 1902 – April 22, 1984) was an American landscape photographer and environmentalist known for his black-and-white images of the American West. He helped found Group f/64, an association of photographers advo ...

Award at the

Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance The Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance is an automotive charitable event held each year on the Pebble Beach Golf Links in Pebble Beach, California. It is widely considered the pinnacle event of its kind and one of the most prestigious car events i ...

in California.

History

The collection began as the Thompson Products Auto Album, which was also founded by Crawford. Crawford explained that when he started collecting the cars, it was simply because it seemed a shame to let them be scrapped, which was the typical fate of almost all antique machinery at the time. He saw value in saving a few historically significant examples. In 1990, the museum sold off almost 70 automobiles by putting them up for auction with

Sotheby's Sotheby's () is a British-founded American multinational corporation with headquarters in New York City. It is one of the world's largest brokers of fine and decorative art, jewellery, and collectibles. It has 80 locations in 40 countries, and ...

. To pay down debt, the museum sold or auctioned 44 cars in 2009, 24 of them through RM Auctions in October. The deaccessions proceeded over public protest and the objections of Kay Crawford, the widow of founder Frederick C. Crawford. The museum also sold a Goodyear F2G Corsair it had purchased from Walter Soplata and a Airco DH.4 originally acquired by Crawford. As of 2018, the museum featured two major exhibits: ''Setting the World in Motion,'' featuring cars and airplanes made in Northeast Ohio'','' and ''REVolution: The Automobile in America,'' telling the story of the automobile in America.

References

External links

Official website
{{authority control Aerospace museums in Ohio Automobile museums in Ohio Museums in Cleveland University Circle

Collections

History

See also

References

External links