About Us

The Westport Museum is open Tuesday – Saturday from 11am to 5pm. The Museum is closed on Sundays and Mondays. Learn more about visiting the Museum.

The Westport Museum offers year-round opportunities for internships and volunteer positions. These roles support the Museum’s mission and help make ongoing programs and exhibitions possible. Learn more about our available positions.

Our grounds and buildings are available for rentals. Please explore our available spaces for your next event.

The Museum charges nominal fees for use of its archival collections. These fees help support the maintenance and upkeep of these materials. You can submit a research request on our research page.

The Westport Museum is a private institution not owned by the Town of Westport, nor is it supported by town funding. We rely on our members and donors as well as grant funding to keep the Museum’s programming and mission moving forward. 

The Museum only occupies the corner lot of Avery Place and Myrtle Avenue. Although once part of the same property, Veteran’s Green is now the property of the Town of Westport, not the Museum.

The Westport Museum was known for most of its early history as The Saugatuck Historical Society. Originally incorporated as the Westport Historical Society in 1889, the members quickly changed the name to Saugatuck to be more representative of the early history of the town.

The Westport Museum’s headquarters building was originally a 5-bay Colonial House built around 1795. Recent evaluations of the house structure have revealed that the original house was not a Saltbox as thought. The Italianate structure was built around the original house around 1865. While the building is currently white with green shutters, the Bradely-Wheeler House has been dove gray with black shutters, pale lilac with lavender trim, and other colors in its lifetime.

The house was almost always the site of a ground-floor business. Westport was a working harbor town until the 1950s and businesses often occupied the ground floor of homes as well. The original structure on the site housed a millinery shop and a blacksmith possibly operated out of one of the outbuildings. The current structure housed a dentist’s office and a doctor’s office before becoming a museum.

The property once had outbuildings. A second small barn and workshop once stood on the property near the edge of the current driveway and there were open front wooden sheds attached to the side of the historic cobblestone bar. Cows and other small farm animals would most likely have sheltered in these structures.