The Museum of the Peaceful Arts was a museum in Manhattan, New York City. Established at 24 West 40th St. around 1920, it was later relocated to the Daily News Building at 220 E. 42nd St.[1] It was later closed, and superseded by the New York Museum of Science and Industry.
The project was originally envisioned as a complex of twenty museums to be located on the west side of Manhattan in Riverside Park, or, according to later plans, near the Jerome Park Reservoir in the Bronx. The original charter shows the scope of the museum system:
George Frederick Kunz proposed the organization of an entirely new museum, the "Museum of the Peaceful Arts" or the "Museums of the Peaceful Arts." As there are museums dedicated to science, war and industry, this would be one devoted to the study and exhibition of the peaceful arts. "Mr. Julius Rosenwald's industrial museum gift paralleled the $2,500,000.00 bequest of the late Henry R. Towne, lock and hardware man, to New York for a Museum of Peaceful Arts. Mr. Towne had been interested in such a museum by Dr. George F. Kunz, mineralogist and gem expert, an honorary fellow of the American Museum of Natural History, who has visited every world's fair since the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition in 1876. Announcement of the Towne bequest sent experts in agriculture, animal industry, mining and metallurgy, transportation, engineering, aeronautics, etc., etc., flocking to Europe to study exhibits in such places as the German Museum in Munich, which contains replicas or originals of epochal contrivances, including James Watt's first steam engine, Diesel's oil-compression engine, Dunlop's original tires. The findings of these experts will assist Chicago's industrialists as well as New York's, in assembling a record of material ascendancy of mankind, a record that is to be made practical rather than theoretical, with many working models of machinery, to afford inventors an industrial laboratory."[2]
The museum proved to be successful. The New Yorker had a discussion about it in 1929: "They have unusual machines: Under a microscope you can see how much you can bend a steel rail with the pressure of your finger, a movie shows air currents moving, etc. The collection was started in 1913 by a group of business men. For the last two years it has been in the present museum which is supported, largely, by a bequest of two and a half million dollars from the late Henry F. Towne."[3]
Fay Cluff Brown (1881-1968) was a physicist and inventor who created and supervised the development of educational exhibits, most notably in the Museum of Science and Industry at New York City's Museums of the Peaceful Arts. Much of his scientific research focused on the element selenium. Early in his career, Brown invented a device using selenium, which translated printed text into sound.[4]
Among the items owned by the Museum of the Peaceful Arts was America's first submarine: "Dr. Peter J. Gibbons and his son, Austin Flint Gibbons, who recently bought the old United States submarine boat Holland from junk dealers, yesterday presented the relic in perpetuity to the Association for the Establishment and Maintenance for the People of the City of New York of a Museum of the Peaceful Arts. Dr. George F. Kunz, the expert on gems, President of Tiffany & Co., is President of the new Association."[5]
Several notable inventors of the time were interested in the new museum. Orville Wright wrote to Kunz in May 1925, about giving one of the original Wright airplanes to the museum, and his experiences with other museums:[6]
In a book on the history of science, George Sarton says: "This museum is quoted here only pro memoria. The idea was originated by George F. Kunz (1856-1932): The projected Museum of the Peaceful Arts (paper read before the American Association of Museums's Meeting, New York, 1912, 12 pages). Great efforts were made to obtain sufficient capital but failed. It was more or less replaced by the New York Museum of Science and Industry. G. Sarton has in his archives a considerable correspondence on this subject."[7]