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Finger Lakes Boating Museum Finds Permanent Home

By March 27, 2014No Comments

Situated under Lake Ontario in the west-central section of Upstate New York, The Finger Lakes has quite the boating history — especially with locally-built wooden boats. 

The Finger Lakes Boating Museum (FLBM) has been sharing the region’s boatbuilding story since 1997. For years, the museum kept its collection of more than 100 local antique boats in storage, displaying them only once a year at the local summer boating festival. Last year, the “museum without walls” began looking for a permanent residence and temporarily moved into a storage facility in Hammondsport, New York. Finally, in 2014, FLBM has a permanent place to call home, after the old Taylor Wine Company building in Hammondsport was donated by its current owners, Mercury Aircraft. 

“We are excited to be working on the permanent home for the Museum,” says Ed Wightman, president of the FLBM Board of Trustees. “We enthusiastically look forward to being an effective and worthy part of the community.”
Today, the museum has more than 100 locally-made boats that were donated over the years from a variety of manufacturers, according to the FLBM website. The collection includes wooden rowboats, canoes, sailboats and motorboats. 

According to an article published in the Corning, New York’s newspaper, The Leader, the museum will have its grand opening at the new facility in August.

FLBM will now offer community courses from its new headquarters and continue educating the public about the Finger Lakes’ rich boating history. 

For more information, visit flbm.org.

Photo courtesy of Eric Wensel / The Leader