Wonders of the Music House Museum, Grand Traverse County

Here’s your opportunity to combine your love of music and history in one package: The Music House Museum in Traverse City.

It doesn’t matter what your music preference is...this museum has the most historic musical instruments ever produced.

In the early 1880s the Stiffler family settled the property and turned it into a dairy farm. After World War II, it switched from dairy to orchards. In 1979, descendant David Stiffler formed a company that would collect and restore mechanical musical instruments in order to display them for public consumption. This eventually morphed into the Music House Museum which formally opened in 1984.

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The current instrument collection has examples of pieces that range from the 1700s to the 1950s as well as a collection of old phonographs and early radios.

The crown jewel of the collection would have to be the 1922 Mortier Dance Amaryllis Organ. It was specifically built for the Victoria Palace in Ypres, Belgium. It arrived in America in 1967, bought by the museum from private owners in 1982, and restored in time for the opening. It is just one of two known surviving instruments that was made in the same size and style.

This museum will make your jaw drop...no foolin’. The address is 7377 U.S. 31 North Williamsburg, northeast of Traverse City. See the gallery below!