The Schmidt Boca Raton History Museum — Attraction in Boca Raton

The Boca Raton Historical Society was created to preserve the artifacts relating to the history of Boca Raton. In Spanish Boca Raton literally means rat's mouth but Boca also means inlet so a nicer meaning of the name would be inlet mouse. This was a navigational reference to a jagged inlet. The first inhabitants of the area were the Tequesta Indians. Henry Flagler made the area accessible to pioneers when he brought the East Coast Railway into the area. In the 1900's Japanese immigrants farmed pineapples in the area. The town was incorporated in 1925 at the height of the Florida land boom. Noted architect Adisson Mizner turned his attention from Palm Beach when he was hired by the town to design a world class community. Through the years Boca Raton was a farming community as people grew vegetables, especially green beans. . Through the 1960'[s the population grew attracting a new state university Florida Atlantic University. Today over 80,000 people call Boca Raton home.

The Historical Society operates two buildings. The first is the old town hall built in 1926 that used to contain Boca's police station, fire department, and library. It was designed by Addison Mizner. Today the building contains a welcome center and history museum. The Historical Society also operate the F.E.C. Railway building which is a restored 1930's train depot.

In addition to operating the buildings for tours the Historical Society also conducts a wide array of programs like lecture, special events, and walking tours. I am very interested in the 1.5 hour walking tour of the Historic Boca Raton Resort and Club held on the 2nd & 4th Tuesdays at 2 PM, January through May, 2019. The cost is $15. Like a lot of historical places they hold events during the week but I am going to try and see if I can line it up for when I have off from school.

When I visited the historic town hall there were a group of three homeless people occupying the front porch, one of which was passed out. There were even more homeless people around the sidewalk and across the street at the park. This is something I had never seen in Boca before. It is sad to see that some people are not enjoying the affluent life style of Boca. We will see how the town writes the next chapter in...

We visited as part of our anniversary celebration on 6/21. Our first attempt to visit was about 3 years ago on our second date but it was a weekend and we ended up at the Boca Art museum. We've always wanted to return but the hours makes it difficult for a M-F 8-5pm schedule. I had to request off from work to make this happen.

It is a somewhat small museum that is heavily focused on Addison Mizner's influence on the area. As a Boca native, I learned a bunch of interesting stuff about locations that I have driven by my whole life. There are a couple rooms with artifacts and a 45 minute video. The staff member at the desk is an absolute dear. He explained the collection to us, and engaged us in talk. He offered to reset the tape for us if we wanted to watch from the beginning. It was well worth the $5 entrance fee.

The only negative is that the museum is also office space for staff members which seemed a bit weird. One of the rooms in the back had two staff members working at desks while one room near the gift shop had at least one person working (I thought it was another exhibit room and quickly backed out when realizing.) We weren't made to feel unwelcome at all and we greeted quite cheerfully... for me I just felt weird to be hovering in...

The Schmidt boca raton history museum number 1 parking is perfect right in front with beautiful trees surrounded it the architech of the building was exquisite! Went in the nice lady I think her name was Laurie she was very informative friendly I learned a plethora of information plus this is great for a little day date because you can just leave your car parked walk right across the street have some lunch and sight see 👀there was a lot of history on Mr Mizner and on Pearl city and IBM...