The Manassas Museum System, within the Historic Resources Department of the City of Manassas, cares for the seven properties described below. The properties range from a modern museum to historic sites and adaptive reuse properties.
• The Manassas Museum offers a permanent exhibition “A Place of Passages” which tells the chronological story of the Manassas area from its Native American inhabitants, through agrarian development, the Civil War Battles of Manassas, post-war development, education, business, and agriculture, and explores how transportation, predominantly the railroads, has affected the area’s course of history.
• Manassas Industrial School/Jennie Dean Memorial is on the site of an 1893 school founded by Jennie Dean, a former slave. Interpretive signage, a kiosk with historic photographs and a taped narrative incorporates history, oral history, and archaeological findings of Jennie Dean’s life and of the largest African American school founded in Northern Virginia after the Civil War. A bronze casting of the entire school orients viewers to the buildings as depicted in the original stone footings. The tape and castings provide access for the visually impaired.
• Mayfield Earthwork Fort The 12-acre Mayfield Fort, part of the Civil War Trails, includes interpretive signage about the history of the site, Civil War activities, earthwork fort construction, cannon, and a replica of a “Quaker Gun.”
• The 1825 Liberia Plantation, one of the few plantation houses to remain standing after the battles of First and Second Manassas, served as headquarters and hospital for both sides of the conflict during the Civil War. The house will be undergoing stabilization in 2003 and restoration and site development for living history in the ensuing years.
• The Southern Railway Train Depot contains the James and Marion Payne Memorial Railroad Exhibition Gallery that interprets the railroad history of the Manassas area. The building is occupied by Historic Manassas, Inc. and serves as the visitor center for Manassas.
• Hopkins Candy Factory, leased to the Center for the Arts, is an adaptive reuse of the largest historic building in Old Town Manassas. It contains a history exhibit about the development of the site upon which the building is situated. An art gallery, classrooms and theater are used by the Center for the Arts.
• Cannon Branch Earthwork Fort, which is currently under development, is an important site that will interpret the heritage of the Civil War from the Union perspective.
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http://www.manassasmuseum.org
