Mattatuck Museum: Art in the Brass City
Near New Haven, Connecticut
Waterbury calls itself the Brass City, built on the manufacture of buttons, clocks, and copper goods for two centuries. The Mattatuck Museum, on West Main Street downtown, grew out of that industrial heritage. It was established in eighteen seventy-seven as the Mattatuck Historical Society to preserve the history of the region that colonial settlers knew as Mattatuck, a Native American place name.
The museum has been collecting ever since, growing to thousands of works including oils, photographs, sculpture, and historical documents. Its art galleries have works by Alexander Calder and Frederic Church, alongside Connecticut-specific collections and a remarkable holding of fifteen thousand buttons from around the world. Industrial history and fine art, side by side in the Brass City.
