Fairbanks Museum & Planetarium
Natural History · St. Johnsbury, Vermont
A Victorian natural history museum in a barrel-vaulted oak gallery on Main Street in St Johnsbury, built in 1889 by Franklin Fairbanks of the platform-scale family and still arranged largely the way he left it - about 175,000 objects in cases, stuffed birds and mounted mammals and beetles and meteorites, a cabinet of curiosities preserved at the scale of a small city museum. It holds the only public planetarium in Vermont, though that room is currently closed and the astronomy has moved outdoors to a deck. The museum also produces the weather broadcasts that Vermont listens to on the radio, which is not a thing most museums do.
1302 Main Street, St. Johnsbury, Vermont, 05819, United States
Open DAILY and YEAR ROUND, generally 10am to 5pm, with a modest per-person admission and free street parking on and around Main Street. ⚠ THE LYMAN SPITZER JR. PLANETARIUM - THE ONLY PUBLIC PLANETARIUM IN VERMONT AND THE REASON MANY PEOPLE COME - IS TEMPORARILY CLOSED. Tours of the cosmos are being presented on an OUTDOOR ASTRONOMY DECK instead, on a weather-dependent schedule. ⚠ PHONE 802-748-2372 BEFORE TRAVELLING if the planetarium or the astronomy programming is your reason for the trip; this is the most likely way to be disappointed here. Groups and school parties are arranged in advance. ⚠ THE ST. JOHNSBURY ATHENAEUM IS 220 METRES DOWN THE SAME STREET AND IS FREE - the two were built by two brothers of the same family and are the reason to stop in St Johnsbury. Do both.
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