The Pump House Museum and Learning Center is filled with fascinating exhibits, artifacts, and historical images.

The North Gallery is reserved for changing, temporary major exhibitions and the South Gallery contains three permanent exhibits. Descriptions of these exhibits are outlined below as well as two outdoor exhibits located nearby. These exhibits have been prepared by Valerie van Heest and William Lafferty of Holland-based Lafferty van Heest and Associates in collaboration with the board of the Historic Ottawa Beach Society and its resident historian Dan Aument.

Explore our current exhibits!

FAMOUS FACES – LOCAL PLACES

The North Gallery temporary exhibit celebrates a diverse group of remarkable individuals from differing eras whose time in Holland Michigan helped shape their values, creativity and purpose. They are linked to enduring themes of leadership, justice, and service.

Some of these figures are famous around the world, while others are noteworthy on a local level but all enriched the lives of others on a regional, national, and sometimes International level. their stories reveal how experiences rooted in one community can inspire ideas and actions with wide reaching impact.

The exhibit also explores the local places tied to their lives – places they shaped and places that shaped them in return. Together these stories remind us that meaningful change and lasting legacies often begin in a place called home.

HOTEL OTTAWA: Illuminating History

The South Gallery exhibit tells the story of when the hotel opened in 1886 and how the growing middle class had both time and money to travel.

At the same time, America was entering the Second Industrial Revolution, aka the Electric Revolution. This would progressively elevate the hotel experience and change the American way of life. The Museum building, originally an isolated electric power plant, and the big Deming water pump are the two most significant artifacts which remain from the hotel.

Digital displays in the South Gallery have information about the Big Red lighthouse, Lakewood Farm and Jenison Electric Amusement Park, and the Kids Corner with hundreds of examples of student art and writing projects about the history of our area. Visitors can look at themselves in the Fun House mirrors, or ride the roller coaster car which displays a video of a 1920’s figure 8 roller coaster.

Also located in the South Gallery is the newest interactive display in the Pump House Museum and Learning Center, which describes the isolated electric generating plant which was installed in the Museum building in 1901.

The video ‘How to light up the Hotel Ottawa’ highlights the various parts of this interpretive exhibit.

The central part of the exhibit is a very intricate and detailed working model of an early steam powered electric generating plant. When visitors to the Museum spin the handle on the exhibit, they’ll see the antique generator in action – and the lights on the big postcard of the Hotel Ottawa will light up

This exhibit made possible through Ottawa County Parks and Recreation Department.

If you’d like to see what we’ve displayed in the museum in the past, click here to explore our previous exhibits!