About the Molly Brown House Museum
The Molly Brown House Museum occupies the Capitol Hill home of Margaret Tobin Brown, the Titanic survivor, suffragist and philanthropist the stage and screen later renamed "the Unsinkable Molly Brown." Architect William Lang designed the house in 1889, blending Queen Anne and Richardsonian Romanesque styles for its first owners and fitting it with electricity, indoor plumbing, central heat and a telephone. Margaret and her husband J.J. Brown, a mining engineer whose work at the Little Johnny mine in Leadville produced one of North America's great gold strikes, made 1340 Pennsylvania their home in 1894.
After Margaret's death in 1932 the house was sold and carved into a dozen rooming spaces; it later served as a boarding house for men and a Jane Addams Hull home for girls. In 1970, as demolitions swept the neighborhood, a group of preservation-minded residents incorporated as Historic Denver, Inc. to rescue the building. Using paint analysis, architectural research and photographs taken in 1910, they restored the interior and exterior to its early-twentieth-century appearance. The house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972 and is a designated Denver Landmark. Historic Denver still owns and operates the museum, which welcomes roughly 50,000 visitors a year.
The museum's interpretation goes well beyond the Titanic. Exhibits follow Margaret from her girlhood in Hannibal, Missouri, to Leadville and Denver, her 1914 campaign for the U.S. Senate, her relief work on the rescue ship Carpathia (she left in Lifeboat 6 and chaired the survivors' committee), and the French Legion of Honor she received in 1932 for her wartime service. The household staff, the Browns' world travels and the 1910 garden party for 800 guests all get their due.
Collections and Research Services
The museum's collections comprise more than 8,000 objects and archival items relating to the Brown family, the house and Margaret's public life, and a portion can be browsed online through the museum's collections portal. Primary sources such as a scrapbook kept by Margaret's niece, Helen Kosure, and the letters exchanged between Margaret and her housekeeper Ella Grable underpin the interpretation, and the museum publishes research articles and a timeline of Margaret's life on its website. Prospective donors are asked to email photographs and details to the Curator of Collections before bringing items in. For the broader Denver record, the Denver Public Library Western History Collection is the city's main archive of photographs, directories and newspapers; our guide to finding old photos of a house or neighborhood shows how to use collections like these.
Planning Your Visit
The museum is open Wednesday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., with Thursday hours extended to 7 p.m.; last entry is one hour before closing. Visitors choose between a self-guided ticket, using the museum's Bloomberg Connects audio guide, and a guided tour, and the museum urges advance purchase because time slots often sell out. The Victorian house has no air conditioning, and backpacks, large bags and strollers should be left at home. Because of the historic structure, only the first floor and the basement exhibit space are reachable by lift. A museum store operates from 10 a.m. until 30 minutes before closing. Current prices and the event calendar are posted at mollybrown.org, or call (303) 832-4092. Railroad enthusiasts can pair the visit with the Colorado Railroad Museum in nearby Golden.
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