Music House Museum

 September 3, 2025

Turtle Lake CG site 165

Beulah, MI

If the number of pictures you collected today is any indication, I'd say you REALLY enjoyed your rainy day activity today.  The Music House Museum is located on North US 31 in Williamsburg, not far from Traverse City.  The former farmland building houses a unique collection of rare automated musical instruments that have been meticulously restored and are demonstrated by a knowledgeable docent who also shared the history of each item.  

From music boxes that used cylinders to create their music

to a unique giraffe piano.  Only 5 of the 50 made are still in circulation.  It is labor intensive to tune, taking two workers because of the raised back design.  

Most of the items date back to the late 1800's to early 1900's.  

This music box was labor intensive as each pin was hand cut and welded into place.  With about 10 pins per inch, this cylinder has well over 1000 pins.  It was definitely an item only the extremely wealthy could afford to purchase.  

Check out this gold inlayed 1925 player piano that actually is self playing as it uses electricity instead of foot pedals that a person would have to pump.  

With the paper rolls being so old, the staff have carefully recreated new rolls so that the player pianos can be demonstrated/played.

This huge organ takes up the whole back wall.

There was even an old silent Laurel and Hardy movie shared to demonstrate this 1924 Wurlitzer Cinderella Theatre Organ used to provide the sounds/music to accompany the silent films.

What a delightful collection!

This paper music is a ribbon, similar to ribbon candy rather than rolls.

All it takes is a nickel to operate this player piano

A nickel doesn't sound like much in our current times, but with workers only bringing home thirty cents for a day a work, it was quite costly back in the day plus the cost of their drinks while at the saloon.

Our current area is known for growing cherries.  We passed by a business named Cherryland Motors and other named Cherryland Grocery.  And then there is the World's Largest Pie Pan

If it was holding a pie, it definitely would have been a soggy pie with all this rain today.

I'm Chloe