Qualla: Science Museum of Virginia

Science Museum of Virginia: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rifleman 82, CC BY-SA 4.0. An SR-71 Blackbird hangs from the ceiling of what used to be Track 1. Below it, a Chesapeake and Ohio Kanawha-class steam locomotive sits where it might have steamed in 1948, when this was Broad Street Station and the Silver Meteor rolled in from Miami. The building - a neoclassical temple designed by John Russell Pope in 1917 - was scheduled for demolition in the 1970s. Friends of a museum that had no home and no funding pressed the state to let them in. They got the building. Today the Science Museum of Virginia is the kind of place where a child can stand under a Mach 3 reconnaissance jet, then walk through a train station, then watch a movie on the largest screen in the state - all in the same afternoon.

Image: Rifleman 82 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Science Museum of Virginia: Seventy Years to Get Started

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Coredesat, CC BY 3.0. The Virginia General Assembly first approved funds for a state exhibits center in 1906, to display mineral and timber specimens at the 1907 Jamestown Exposition. After the fair ended, the items were moved to Richmond's Capitol Square. The 'State Museum' opened in 1910. In 1942, t...

Image: Coredesat | CC BY 3.0

Science Museum of Virginia: Saving the Train Station

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rifleman 82, CC BY-SA 4.0. Broad Street Station opened in 1919 after construction began in 1917, built for the Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac Railroad - architect John Russell Pope's neoclassical statement on the city's western edge. It also served the Atlantic Coast Line, the Norfolk and Western, an...

Image: Rifleman 82 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Science Museum of Virginia: The Dome and the Kugel

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit J. Dudley, Public domain. Most visitors come for the spectacle. The Dome opened in 1983 as the Universe Planetarium and Space Theater, with an Evans and Sutherland Digistar projector - the world's first computer-video planetarium system - and a 76-foot domed screen that was then the largest in the world. ...

Image: J. Dudley | Public domain

Science Museum of Virginia: Trains, Planes, and a Lost Atomic Bomb

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Diego Tirira from Quito, Ecuador, CC BY-SA 2.0. The old train loading area is now the museum's industrial gallery. The C&O Kanawha-class steam locomotive #2732 sits where freight once moved. The RF&P 'Car One' business car is open for walk-throughs. Above them all hangs the Aluminaut - the world's first aluminum submarine, des...

Image: Diego Tirira from Quito, Ecuador | CC BY-SA 2.0

Science Museum of Virginia: The Sundial in the Parking Lot

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bill Dickinson from Richmond, VA, USA, CC BY 2.0. Some of the museum's strangest exhibits are outdoors. In 1981 the world's largest analemmic sundial was dedicated in the museum's parking lot - later listed in the Guinness Book of World Records. Visitors stand on the marker for the date and read their own shadow. The 1982 Crysta...

Image: Bill Dickinson from Richmond, VA, USA | CC BY 2.0