Lyman Allyn Art Museum
Connecticut
The Lyman Allyn Art Museum opened in nineteen thirty-two on a wooded hillside above New London, Connecticut, funded by a bequest from Harriet Upson Allyn in memory of her father, the shipping merchant Lyman Allyn. The neoclassical granite building was designed by Charles Platt, a prominent New York architect, and sits beside Connecticut College. The collection began with decorative arts and Connecticut silver reflecting the whaling wealth of the region, and has grown to include American paintings, European works, and ancient artifacts. It is one of the few significant fine-arts museums between Providence and New Haven, a monument to the mercantile ambition that New London's whale oil economy made possible before the industry collapsed.
