Macculloch Hall Historical Museum

Macculloch Hall was built starting in 1810 by Scottish immigrant George Perot Macculloch, the businessman who organized the Morris Canal. The brick Federal-style townhouse is one of the few intact early-1800s mansions left in downtown Morristown.

The museum’s exceptional holding is its Thomas Nast collection, the largest public collection of the cartoonist’s original drawings anywhere. Nast lived two blocks away on MacCulloch Avenue from 1872 to 1902 and is the cartoonist who popularized the Republican elephant, the Democratic donkey, and the modern image of Santa Claus. The political cartoons that brought down Boss Tweed’s Tammany Hall machine in the 1870s came out of that house. Rotating exhibits draw on the collection alongside touring shows and the museum’s own decorative-arts holdings.

The walled gardens behind the house are free and open every day from 8am to dusk, a small piece of formal landscape in the middle of town. The museum itself is open three days a week.