With spot gold prices above $950 an ounce, I thought I’d check out the new summer exhibit at the Molly Brown House Museum, “All That Gold Can Buy – Denver’s Mining Millionaires.”
Margaret “Molly” Brown is the famous Titanic survivor whose husband, J.J., made a gold-mining fortune in Colorado in 1893.
She was among a group of philanthropists who helped develop high society in a rough-and-tumble industrial city where pioneers, adventurers and capitalists came to stake their dreams.
Museum director Annie Levinsky, who gave me a tour, said many of the home’s furnishings and accoutrements actually belonged to Molly Brown.
Brown was a philantropist who most notably helped the survivors of the 1912 Titanic tragedy rebuild their lives. Many of them were immigrants who lost everything when the ship sank.
There was also that musical, “The Unsinkable Molly Brown.”
“Nobody called her ‘Molly’ during her life,” Levinsky said. “But it sings well.”
The summer exhibit aims to display “trappings of Victorian wealth and … how the Browns, and their friends, spent their money.”
Lacy ball gowns, ornate decore, finely crafted furnishings, crystal, china and silk – it all seemed to serve one purpose.
Seems like all these haughty Victorians wanted to do was sit around their fancy private parlors and drink tea.
And with all the loot they blew sipping tea and pretending to be so worldly and smart …
… why the heck didn’t they think of this?
(INFO: Admission is $8 for adults, $6 for seniors and $4 for kids 6-12 years old. Tours available Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. – 4 p.m. and on Sundays from 12 noon – 4 p.m. During June, July and August, the Museum is also open on Mondays. Phone: (303) 832-4092 ext. 16. Or see www.mollybrown.org)
(PHOTOS: Tea parlor shots courtesy of Molly Brown House Museum. Others by yours truly.)
