Visitors to Erie’s Hagen History Center will get to know the nation’s greatest architect and the hero of the Battle of Lake Erie in 2026.
The museum complex at 356 W. Sixth St. is creating a “museum within a museum” focusing on architect Frank Lloyd Wright and his work.
It’s also creating a permanent exhibit about Oliver Hazard Perry beyond his role as a War of 1812 naval commander.
Frank Lloyd Wright Field Office Museum
The new Frank Lloyd Wright Field Office Museum will be anchored by the architect’s San Francisco office, which was dismantled, brought to Erie and reassembled in the Hagen History Center’s Watson-Curtze Mansion in 2021.
“We’re doing a build-out using state-of-the-art exhibits all dedicated to Wright,” said Hagen History Center CEO Cal Pifer. “It’s a seven-figure project designed to fully conceptualize Wright as both a man and as an architect.”
Understanding Wright is necessary to fully appreciate his designs, Pifer said.
“If you don’t understand the person, you’re not going to fully understand the office. Or for that matter, I don’t think any of the Wright sites would really really resonate if you don’t have some deep background about Wright.”
All of the Wright-designed homes and buildings open to the public provide some information about the architect “but nothing to the breadth and depth we’re going to have,” Pifer said. “Nothing like we’re planning exists.”
Wright set up shop at the California field office while designing San Francisco area projects from 1951 until his death in 1959.
The office is included in the Frank Lloyd Wright Trust list of Wright-designed sites open to the public. Visitors from across the country have come to see it, helping Hagen History Center break attendance records in 2025, Pifer said.
“We had a site that was bringing people in, but it was completely without context,” Pifer said. “We initially looked at adding context, and that ballooned into what we’re now doing.”
The Frank Lloyd Wright Field Office Museum is expected to open in late spring. Zebradog studio of Madison, Wisconsin, is helping to design the museum and its new interpretive exhibits.
The Perry exhibit
Oliver Hazard Perry commanded the American Great Lakes fleet built at Erie during the War of 1812. His ships, including the Niagara, defeated and captured the British fleet in the Battle of Lake Erie in September 1813, when Perry was 28 years old.
The new Perry exhibit at the Hagen History Center will feature items auctioned by the Perry family and obtained by the Hagen History Center.
“Items that had been in the Perry family for 200 years will augment our existing collection, which is pretty substantial,” Pifer said. “They’ll be included in a first class, national-level exhibit dedicated to Perry with particular focus on him.
“We’re not going to focus too much on the Battle of Lake Erie or the War of 1812 but will focus instead on Perry as an individual, similar to what we’re doing with Wright,” Pifer said. “Among the items we acquired are some deeply personal letters from Perry to his father and to his wife that really humanize him. We also have his last will and testament and even a lock of his hair.”
The items are among dozens of documents and other Perry family artifacts auctioned by Florida-based OAK Auctions in May. Sale price was just over $37,000, according to the OAK Auctions website.
The Perry family was told that the winning bid was by the Hagen History Center, with the history center’s permission.
“When they found out that it was us, they were thrilled that the items were coming to Erie,” Pifer said. “They think it’s the rightful location.”
A variety of donors are funding the new “six-figure” exhibit, which will be housed in the history center’s Wood-Morrison House, in a structure built to resemble the belly of a ship, Pifer said.
“The whole exhibit will look as if it’s below decks on the Niagara.”
The history center is working with Bostwick Design Partnership of Erie on the project, Pifer said. The exhibit is expected to open next summer.
