Virginia Beach Old Coast Guard Station (preserved building courtesy www.roundamerica.com)
During my visit to Virginia Beach, I felt like a free bird, bask in the golden sand and take a long stroll in the evening with your beloved. The best part within this resort city Virginia Beach is the Broadwalk. The moment you step on it, it makes you feel you are on vacation. Everything seems so eye catching and captivating.
Moving on the Broadwalk your eyes will never ignore the old building of Old Coast Guard Station. This conspicuous white building is visible even through huge and big buildings. The building dates back to 1903 as a life saving station and later from 1915 to 1969 as Coast Guard Station.
A time came when the building was no longer in service, remained idle for decades. There were plans to demolish it but thanks to the people of this city whose timely intervention and financial backing not only saved it but gave a new life by transforming it into a Maritime Museum. Now this old fashioned oceanfront museum has become a must see site of Virginia Beach.
Virginia Beach: Old Coast Guard Station ( hand colored postcard picture of 1907 courtesy: www.oldcoastguardstation.com)
The credit of restoring it goes to the citizens who preserved the honor of brave coast guard, the history of Virginia’s coastal communities and maritime heritage. The moment you step inside, you are automatically getting carried away in that era, as if in a trance. The exhibits are displayed on two floors.
The lower gallery, once an old boat room and the upper gallery were surf men used to sleep now has around 1000 photographs and more than 1800 artifacts that speaks volume of US Life-Saving and Coast Guard services, shipwrecks off Virginia coast. The shipwreck gallery with close to 600 artifacts of shipwreck tells the innumerable ship wreck stories.
Virginia Beach: OCGS Museum Artifacts ( courtesy www.vbfun.com)
It is better to move along with volunteer docent, who will tell you the story behind every artifacts and shipwrecks. There are ship wreck maps, inscription about the value of boats and cargo along with surfmen’s handwritten logs from the shipwrecks, metal ID tags of surfmen’s and much more.
Another brick to the wall is the Towercam which enables visitor to take the sight of the passing ships on the horizon. This is not all; the high powered camera transmits the pictures to the computer for the visitors to view.
The museum store is the new wine in old bottle, featuring amazing books, jewelry, clocks, toys, barometers, nautical gifts and Pirate Gear. The
museum store is one effort to make this place interesting and the other one is Story Time for children which are held every Wednesday in summers.
For many it may not sound that attractive but museums of paintings, decorative arts and relics are many but museums like Old Coast Guard Station are rare and one of its kind.
