(upbeat music) (keyboard keys tapping) (upbeat music) (engine roaring) (upbeat music) (engine roaring) (upbeat music) (keyboard keys tapping) (whimsical music) - So the National Museum of the Great Lakes moved to Toledo, Ohio in 2014.

It's owned and operated by the Great Lakes Historical Society that formally owned and operated another museum in Vermilion, Ohio.

We are primarily a history museum, and you as you walk around, there are things for any age, any learning style to enjoy, have fun, and interact with Great Lakes history.

(whimsical music) So when we first moved here, the museum opened up.

It's got 11,000 square feet of interior exhibit space that's open all year round.

Also, joining us at that open time was the Colonel James M. Schoonmaker which is our 617 foot lake freighter outside, amazing views of the skyline of downtown Toledo, and a great way to interact with Great Lakes history in really an experiential way.

(whimsical music) The people behind each of the artifacts are likely the most significant stories that we have to share.

You'll see information not just about the artifacts, but the people connected to the artifacts from the gold medal of the, the Clemon brothers, to, it's a lifesaving gold medal, to some of the captains on the Great Lakes, to people that have lost their lives, to the early settlers and the explorers that were a part of this.

The museum does a great job of sharing those stories, both within the capacity of the daily visitors that come in and the museum everyday stories, to the programmatic work that we do too.

(whimsical music) Being able to share those stories, talk about those people's stories, allow people to understand what it was like life back whenever it was in that particular time, is really an incredible thing to do.

(whimsical music) My favorite thing in the world is to watch somebody walk into the museum doors who've never been here before.

They, we always surpass their expectations.

They come in and are wowed.

It's, it's incredible to watch their faces as they watch our amazing video that greets them when they enter and start the exhibit.

And then to see their expressions as they're touring the museum vessels, and in particular, walking up and down the stairs to the hull of the boat, or the engine room of the boat, or seeing the galleys, or looking at the captain's room.

It's just, I don't think people realize what a, a true amazing thing we've got here yet, and we just can't wait to welcome more people like that in.

(whimsical music) I will say one of my favorite spots and areas to go to is the Colonel James M. Schoonmaker museum ship.

I really encourage people that when they come to visit the museum that they also do the vessel tours as well.

We have a audio tour that people can download on their phones so that they can take a walking tour and it really talks them through that history when they do that.

So I would say first and foremost, you don't wanna miss the museum ship if you can.

And we just, we love to show people what we have to offer.

So if you haven't been here to the National Museum of the Great Lakes yet, you really need to get here.

You are going to be in awe.

(whimsical music) - I grew up in Denver, Colorado, and I got into ceramics when I was in high school.

What I think that the world knows me by is my large scale ceramic work.

(keyboard keys tapping) I grew up in Denver, Colorado, and I got into ceramics when I was in high school.

The work that I make is trying to push some of the boundaries of what's possible to do with ceramics.

And although I have made pottery for years, and I still do, what I think that the world knows me by is my large scale ceramic work.

(whimsical music) In the spring of 2021, one of my former graduate students sent me a calling for artists for a public art project at the new airport that was being built in Kansas City.

And as I kept looking at it closer and closer, I figured I think I could put together a proposal for this project, and that's what I began to do.

I conceived of this idea of building four large airplane wing forms, and the two in the center were gonna be the largest ones, and then there would be two that would flank them and set back a little bit.

Each piece has iconography that's mostly about the place, about Kansas City.

I went to school there.

I kind of consider it my second home, and so I'm very familiar with it.

I just started to pick up on things that are about the place.

And as you look at these four wings, you can see how the Missouri River is moving through there in the lower third of the piece with this blue, strong blue line.

And then below the blue line is basically the pattern of a dragonfly's wing.

(whimsical music) And then above the river are things that are more connected to Kansas City.

So the flowers that you see on the piece, those are from the flowering dogwood tree, which is the state tree of Missouri.

And you'll see a bee on the wing on the far left, that's the state insect of Kansas.

On the far right you'll see a eastern bluebird, which is the state bird of Missouri.

And in the center there's a sort of a big circular object that's kind of like the fingerprint of a human.

And these things are totemic, and they, and of course humans have made totems forever, but never quite like these, because, you know, aviation is relatively new.

So they, they act as sort of large totems.

And then on the ailerons across the wings, there's imagery that spells KCMO in semaphore.

And then the two center wings also have these small airplanes that are Amelia Earhart's airplane that she flew from Hawaii to the United States.

She's important because she's from Kansas City.

So the entire imagery is all graphically a part of Kansas City in one way or another, or the idea of flight.

(whimsical music) I'm hoping that people will identify them as wings.

I think that they're literal enough that you see them and you say, oh, that's a wing, but it's standing in this vertical orientation, which is unusual.

And then they'll start to see the color initially, I think.

And then I think as people get closer and closer to them, or as they walk by them, they're gonna start to get into all of the imagery.

So my hope is is that as people see them from a distance, they're gonna want to get closer and closer to them, and then start to decipher the meaning that's behind them.

(whimsical music) - In the state of Ohio there are over 150 known caves and caverns.

There are only seven or eight that are open to the public.

We are the largest in the state of Ohio.

We're known as America's most colorful cavern.

(whimsical music) (keyboard keys tapping) (whimsical music) In the state of Ohio there are over 150 known caves in caverns.

There are only seven or eight that are open to the public.

We are the largest in the state of Ohio.

We're known as America's most colorful cavern.

(whimsical music) The cavern was discovered on August 17th, 1897.

A 17 year old farmhand had noticed a sinkhole developing over a period of time, and finally curiosity got the best of him.

He grabbed a shovel, dug into that low spot in the sinkhole, and discovered the original entrance of the cavern.

After they discovered the cavern, he ran back and told the original landowner what he had found.

He was very excited, went down and explored it checked it out, and decided to open up for tours soon thereafter.

These were self-guided tours.

People would go down and they'd crawl and explore around the cavern all by themselves, and then they would go as far as they wanted to, turn around and come right back out the same way, all lit by lantern light only.

So after about 25 years of these self-guided tours, the Smith family, they purchased all the land above the cavern, and determined they wanted to dig it out to make it a walking tourist attraction.

They started digging at the original entrance and dug all the way through the cavern.

They end up digging about a mile and a half of passageways, and it took 'em about three and a half years to do it.

Bucket and shovel, hauling everything up outta the cavern.

When the digging was done, the year was 1925, and they officially opened as Ohio Caverns, and started giving guided cavern tours just like the ones we offer today.

The rocks around us are from the Devonian age, so they're over 360 million years old.

The Cavern is located in what's called the Bellefontaine outlier.

Glaciers came through this area and pushed up mud and sediment.

As the glaciers started receding and melting, that water runoff went underground and started carving passageways.

As they carved out passageways, they made wider and wider and wider, and eventually mineral that was left in the rock above started seeping through, and leaching into these open passageways.

As the water was leaching through, it started leaving stains on the walls from the mineral deposits, and that those stains are what gives us all of our color.

And then the white crystal formations grow outside of these, these other colored stains.

(whimsical music) The cavern itself is about a mile and a half in length total of open passageways that are accessible to the public.

They're just under three miles of it.

The deepest point in the entire system is about 103 feet below the surface.

The largest room in the cavern, just over a half acre in, in width, quite extensive and large, but it's more wide than it is tall or anything.

The Crystal King is the largest stalactite in the entire state of Ohio.

It is about four feet, 10 and a half inches long, 400 pounds.

And at our current growth rate, we estimate it to be about 200,000 years old.

(whimsical music) Ohio Caverns is open year round.

It is never a bad time to come visit the cavern.

In the summertime, we offer two different Cavern tours, the historic and the natural wonder.

They each take about 45 minutes to one hour to complete.

In the wintertime, we offer just one tour.

It's known as the winter tour, and it also takes about an hour, and is led by informed tour guides as well.

The weather outside never affects the cavern environment.

It is always 54 degrees underground.

We do 'em rain or shine.

If it's raining, it does drip a little bit more in the cavern, but it's nothing that's ever too detrimental.

There's no flooding or anything that ever goes on underground in our cavern.

Depending on the time of the year you come, you can also see different areas that are available, and some that are not.

So really it works out anytime you wanna come out to the cavern.

We are here and ready to take you through.

Other than the cavern onsite, we have a gem mining sluice.

People can purchase things in their large gift shop.

They bring it out and sift out the sand and dirt, and they pan out the rocks, take 'em home.

We sit on a large 35 acre facility, with two picnic pavilions, large picnic areas, also playgrounds and all that.

So there's a lot to do when you're not just in the cavern.

There's a lot to do up on the surface.

So it is preserved very well just as it was in the 1920s, but you really don't notice much of a difference as you would at that point either.

It is a very, very well preserved and very intact cavern.

We find the preservation and conservation of the cavern to be our utmost priority.

We are all about keeping everything intact and beautiful for future generations to come back and enjoy.

So with every tour that comes through, we emphasize very strongly that they cannot touch or damage anything in the cavern, and we do that just to ensure that everything stays the same and looks great.

One of the big steps we're taking to help conserve and preserve everything that we have, we are, we actually just installed solar panels on the surface here, and we are totally solar powered a hundred percent.

Our entire facility above and below ground is all solar powered.

What we hope that our guests take away when they leave the cavern is that we want everyone to be involved in the preservation and conservation of nature, any and all aspects of nature above ground or below ground.

(whimsical music) Ohio Caverns is still owned and maintained by the same family that purchased it and developed it in the 1920s.

Our goal is to keep it maintained and just kind of keep it as it is to keep it protected and rolling as the years come by.

The best part of coming to Ohio Caverns, in my opinion, is just coming and seeing the smiling faces of everybody that comes to visit.

When people come to visit, they're in a good mood.

They're happy to be here, and we love that.

(whimsical music) - [Lori] The house has been open since 1912, but the property was purchased at 1828, and there's been seven generations of Piatts here.

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(keyboard keys tapping) (whimsical music) - Here at Mac-A-Cheek Castle, we are very excited.

We've been doing lots of new things, both with our foundation that helped support our programs, and here with our exhibits.

The house has been open since 1912.

The property was purchased at 1828, and there's been seven generations of Piatts here.

Castle Mac-A-Cheek actually started in 1828.

Benjamin Piatt came up here from Cincinnati and bought property.

His son, Abram Piatt, is the one who built the house, and his son, William McCoy Piatt, opened it for tours.

We've actually been open for tours since 1912.

Some of the items in the house have been in the house, even in the same position, since at least 1916, because we know from the tourism guide pictures.

- We are sitting on the second floor of Piatt Castle Mac-A-Cheek, a name that the building now carries, because it has been open to the public under that name since 1912.

Initially it was probably just called home, because that's what it was.

The first generation of the family to live here never even saw this building.

They lived in another house.

Their son, Abram, who was their youngest son, lived in the second house on the property, and then built this home in the second part of his life.

It was his son who then opened it for tours.

And there have been several generations after that, including me.

We in fact lived in the back part of the house.

So as a little child, I was well aware of what went on here, but I had nothing to do with it.

And in fact, we weren't supposed to be out here.

But every now and then, my brother and I would sneak out to these places and play in them.

And occasionally my father would talk me into sitting on a rock, and handing brochures to people when they went out the door.

So it was definitely a family business at that point, open seven days a week, 12 months of the year, and yet we had our private part in the back.

(upbeat music) - So when people come into the building, I always suggest there's three things they look at.

The outside is made of limestone.

It came from a quarry right off the father's farm.

The inside has magnificent wood.

That was one of the things that I had remembered from when I had toured younger before I was hired here.

And they were trees right here on the farm.

And then the third thing I tell people to look at at is our ceilings, because our ceilings were painted by a European artist named Oliver Frey.

And so they're very beautiful, and it is the original artwork.

We're very proud of that.

(upbeat music) - What we really try to do with the public is to help them think about what does home mean to them?

Is there a place you will always call home?

(upbeat music) - We have guests who come from all over the country.

A lot of times we have guests who have returned after several years, sometimes with the next generation, or even the next, with grandparents, with grandchildren.

One of the things we do here, we not only have information about Piatt Castle, but we have information to connect it to your own family, and boards that even prompt questions.

And for multi-generations, that's a really cool feature.

(upbeat music) One of the reasons I think that it's so important to keep it open is we as a people, as a country, need to know our history.

And even though it is a Piatt family history, it's like a snapshot of American history, because they show multiple generations here, especially up in the military room.

And so you see a little bit of what that was like.

For example, one of the ancestors was in World War II, and actually earned two Purple Hearts in World War II, and we have letters that he wrote home.

And so those letters are even on display to give you an idea of what life was like during that time.

(upbeat music) Originally when the castle was first built, tourism wasn't the main money draw here.

It was agriculture.

And so we still have exhibits outside that had to do with the farm that was here.

There is still a few acres that are farmed today, even after all these years.

And so that makes it definitely a country feel here.

We encourage people to come in and enjoy our grounds as well.

It's a beautiful area of Ohio.

We even encourage people to bring picnic lunches, and provide the picnic tables for them.

So that's kind of fun to do with your kids before or after touring the house.

(upbeat music) - When I think about this place as historical, I have a lot of different visions.

In fact, I used to say I hated history, and I hated history perhaps because it was, you know, there in my life from the beginning, and I heard about it all the time.

And it took me a long time to understand that those, those names are people, and they lived at different times.

And if you can start to learn about what their lives were like, and compare it to your own, and think about the date that you're living, you can start to put it together into sort of a wonderful jigsaw.

(upbeat music) - So Mac-A-Cheek is a great short trip for you and your family.

You can come out, have a picnic on the lawn.

You can come in and see the house, ask questions, learn about history.

But most of all, you can connect that to your own family history, and use it as a, as a jumping point to tell your grandkids about what it was like when you were in that era of time.

(upbeat music) - We handcraft industrial style pipe lamps, and up upcycle unexpected items into unique lamp creations, ranging from skateboards, musical instruments, blenders, and gumball machines, to just mention a few.

(upbeat music) (keyboard keys tapping) (upbeat music) Hi, I'm Mitchell Antesky, a co-owner and designer here at Toledo Lamp Company.

We handcraft industrial style, steampunk inspired pipe lamps, and upcycle unexpected items into unique lamp creations ranging from skateboards, musical instruments, blenders, and gumball machines, to just mention a few.

The business was formed in 2015, and we purchased it in December of 2020.

We wanted to expand the, the market demographically with unusual items that would fit more decor styles.

We've done chandelier vintage ladders.

We've done parts of airplanes, parts of jeeps.

We're working on two sausage press machines that are going to be lights.

We've made a couple floor lamps, where a client has brought in their grandmother's floor lamp that they remember from going and visiting her, you know, many years ago.

But it has a corny shade on it or something, and so what we do sometimes is we put an oversized, one of the contemporary oversized bulbs in, and it gives it a whole new look.

We source our bulbs from several different places to get the most unusual ones that you can't find in big box stores, and a lot of Edison style bulbs, and designer bulbs.

We don't do a lot of lampshades, because the bulbs really, hmm, pardon the pun, shine.

One of our trademark signature looks is the heart lamp, and a lot of the different heart bulbs.

You can actually find two hearts inside of our logo.

Our tagline is we bring love to light, and we do try to put a lot of love in every lamp we make.

And sometimes people are surprised that you can take pipes, and, and create many different kinds of shapes with them.

And the heart has turned in one of our signature pieces.

(upbeat music) Well, it started out with like the blenders as a joke, and now we have a hard time keeping them on the shelf, because the vintage blenders are hard to find.

We thrift them, garage sales.

We look for a donation sometimes when people say, "Hey, my blender just died, you know?

"Would you take it off my hands for me.

"Save it from the landfill and give it a, a new life."

So we do, we do online marketplace a lot, and basically just try to find whatever we can find sometimes that we look at and go, we think we can lampify that.

We are always creating new lamps.

Sometimes after lamps sell, we have to restock with our standard collection.

And then I try to find time in the day to create one of the new, one of a kind unusual items.

I've had people say, "Well I've got this thing, "and it's in the basement in the closet, "and it's just sitting there down in there collecting dust.

"And I'd like the next generation to see it, "and be able to know the history of it."

(upbeat music) It's a little bit of a challenge, because we have to go through a lot of details as far as size and then what kind of a bulb, and what size bulb, shape bulb.

Where is the cord gonna come out.

If wood is gonna be incorporated into it, you know?

Is it gonna be stained?

Is it gonna be painted?

Lots of different options.

Sometimes they're almost overwhelming when you think of the possibilities, because they are just endless of how something can be transformed.

It's very rewarding when someone comes in, and literally their eyes light up, because they just had no vision of what it was gonna look like.

We strive to really create unusual designs and unique pieces.

You can go to any one of the big box stores, and pull a cheaper lamp off the shelf, but it does not have any personality to it.

It doesn't have your uniqueness to it.

Light has a strange effect on people.

We quite often use the saying that our guests here are drawn in to the light, almost like moths to a flame.

A light has many, many emotional powers to it.

People use it for their everyday tasks, and then more and more people are enjoying their homes, and they want to turn the lights down, but they want a nice warm soft glow, and they just want things, everybody knows that people look better in candle light.

Well, we say people look better in, in our lights, you know (chuckles)?

(upbeat music)