Mark Your Calendars: Wagner Free Institute of Science

The Wagner Free Institute of Science, one of Philadelphia's little known gems, is normally open Tuesday - Friday, 9 a.m. - 4 p.m. During the school year this would exclude most families from attending. This coming Saturday is one of their rare weekend openings, from 12-4. It is billed as a Family Open House and also as Road Show 2009.

The museum is described on the website as:

The Wagner Institute’s nineteenth century exhibit hall – a soaring three-story space – houses an extraordinary collection of natural history specimens including mounted birds and mammals, fossils, rocks and minerals, insects, shells, dinosaur bones, and the first American saber-toothed tiger, discovered on a museum-sponsored expedition to Florida in 1886. Gathered largely by founder William Wagner and Institute curators and faculty during the nineteenth century, the collections are displayed in cherry-wood and glass cabinets dating from the 1880s and maintain their original “systematic” scheme, providing a rare view of a Victorian science museum.

Might be worth a trip out.