Lily Dale's History
The Lily Dale Museum
An 1890 one-room school house is now home to the Lily Dale Museum. The museum is located at the corner of Library Street and East Street across from the Healing Temple.
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Experience a walk back in time amid photos, artifacts and memorabilia from the first days of the Spiritualist movement and the founding of Lily Dale. Enjoy a vintage pictorial display of pioneer landmarks of the region. You’ll find a display of items from the Fox family, whose widely witnessed contact with the Spirit world helped fuel the birth of Spiritualism.
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The Susan B. Anthony women’s suffrage display has been noted as one of the best in the country. Precipitated Spirit paintings, as well as slates by the famous Bangs sisters and the Campbell brothers, adorn the walls to add to this Victorian building’s atmosphere.
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Museum highlights also include an extensive collection of Spiritualist newspapers, magazines and pamphlets that has been acclaimed as the foremost research source of early Spiritualism and its pioneers.
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Any donations received will help expand and maintain our Museum and are tax deductible. Checks can be made out to the Lily Dale Assembly Museum.
The Lily Dale Museum
Historian
Ron Nagy
ronnagylilydale@gmail.com
(716) 969-4825
Hours
June 21-Sep 1: 11am-4pm, Wed-Sunday
(Year-round days and hours by appointment)
Marion H. Skidmore Library
Located on Cottage Row, facing the auditorium and Melrose Park, the Marion H. Skidmore Library houses the largest collection of Spiritualist books in the world.
A reading room is available for public use, and we have thousands of rare books and unique titles to choose from. Please be advised that due to the nature of the materials in our collections, the Marion H. Skidmore Library is a non-circulating research library. To schedule a research appointment or for more information, please contact our Librarian.
The Marion H. Skidmore Library
Library Contact
info@lilydaleassembly.org
(716) 595-8721 x2001
Hours
June 25-Sep 5: 9am-5pm, Daily
Other days and hours call for an appointment
The Fox Cottage
The Fox Cottage, the birthplace of Modern Spiritualism was purchased by Mr. B.F. Bartlett and moved to Lily Dale as a matter of preservation and a memorial to Spiritualism and the Fox Sisters. The Cottage was taken apart and shipped across Lake Ontario to Buffalo then trucked to Lily Dale where it was reassembled.
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Tragically, the cottage burned to the ground in 1955. The ground it sat on in Lily Dale has been turned into a memorial and mediation garden open year round for all visitors.
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You can find this peaceful place behind the Forest Temple on East Street.
The Fox Cottage