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U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center
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Logo of the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center
The United States Army Heritage and Education Center (AHEC), in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, is the U.S. Army's primary historical research facility. Formed in 1999, the center consists of the Military History Institute (MHI), the Army Heritage Museum (AHM), the U.S. Army Conservation Center, and a visitor services staff. The Army Heritage and Education Center is part of the U.S. Army War College, but has its own 56 acre campus on Carlisle Barracks.
The center aims to preserve and interpret the heritage of the U.S. Army. It acquires, preserves, and makes publicly available Army-related library and archival materials. It also provides interpretive exhibits and educational outreach programs to "foster a greater understanding of the Army's central role in the growth, development and protection of the nation and its way of life"[1]. Its motto is "Telling the Army story, one soldier at a time."
The Current Campus
Ridgway Hall, on the campus of the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
As of 2006, the Army Heritage and Education Center has two major buildings on its Carlisle campus, Ridgway Hall and a museum storage facility.
Ridgway Hall opened to the public in 2004. Home of the Military History Institute, the 66,000-square-foot (6,100 m2) hall holds over 11 million items (books, periodicals, manuscripts, photographs, military publications) on U.S. Army history, including the largest American Civil War photograph collection in the world. Along with a reading room for researchers, the hall also has several small exhibits that display artifacts and photographs from AHEC holdings.
Staff in Ridgway Hall--including staff for the yet-to-be built Visitor and Education Center and U.S. Army Conservation Center--oversee the acquisition and conservation of all AHEC holdings, the cataloging of books and other items, the processing of archival collections, the transcription of oral histories, the writing of research bibliographies and other finding aids, and patron and visitor service.
The hall is open to the public on weekdays from 9 a.m. to 4:45 p.m., except federal holidays. The hall also hosts occasional public lectures and book readings in the evenings.
The 8,000-square-foot (740 m2) museum storage facility holds most of the Army Heritage Museum's artifacts and curatorial work space. It is not open to the public.
Re-enactors fire from an American Revolutionary War redoubt on the Army Heritage Trail. It is a replica of Redoubt 10, a British redoubt seized by Continental Army troops at the Siege of Yorktown on October 14, 1781.
Also on campus is the Army Heritage Trail, a one-mile (1.6 km) walking path of outdoor exhibits and markers on various eras in U.S. Army history. Notable exhibits include a replica American Revolutionary War redoubt from the 1781 Siege of Yorktown, cabins built to resemble those of French and Indian War and American Civil War encampments, and several replica camp buildings from World War II. The trail is open to the public year-round during daylight hours.
The trail hosts a few large living history events during the year. Re-enactors also spend time on the trail on most weekends.
History
The U.S. Army Military History Institute pre-dates the Army Heritage and Education Center by over 30 years. Formed in 1967 as the Military History Research Collection, a branch of the U.S. Army War College Library, the institute became the primary repository for unofficial army historical materials. (Official U.S. Army records and other materials belong to the National Archives.) For most of its existence, the institute was housed in Upton Hall on Carlisle Barracks. Built in 1941 as an academic building for the Medical Field Service School, Upton Hall was adequate as a library but ill-suited for the size and preservation needs of a major archive.
Secretary of the Army Louis Caldera formed the Army Heritage and Education Center in June 1999 as a means of bringing an army museum to Carlisle and promoting the holdings of the institute. His successor Thomas E. White approved the construction of a new facility, the present-day Ridgway Hall, in 2001. He stated:
"We will relocate its [the institute's] documents and holdings--the unofficial history of the United States Army--into a newly built state-of-the art archive, give that facility responsibility for administering historical documents and photographs Army wide, and associate it with an educational facility and a museum"[2].
The U.S. Army Military History Institute resided in Upton Hall, on Carlisle Barracks, from 1967 to 2004.
The center, including the holdings of the institute, relocated from Upton Hall to Ridgway Hall in 2004, officially opening on September 24. The Army named the building for former Army chief of staff General Matthew B. Ridgway (1895-1993), commander of the 82nd Airborne Division in World War II and of United Nations forces in the Korean War.
The Army Heritage Museum, formed with the center in 1999, held its artifacts mostly in storage in various places on Carlisle Barracks before the construction of its storage facility beside Ridgway Hall in 2004. Most artifacts are now relocated there in anticipation of future indoor exhibit space in a yet-to-be built visitor center and museum.
By 2005, the center created the Army Heritage Trail and began placing historical markers and large artifacts such as tanks and field artillery on it for public view. The first permanent structures, the Civil War cabins, officially opened in October of that year.
Future plans
A model of what the AHEC campus may look like when the Visitor and Education Center and Army Heritage Museum are built.
Along with further expansion of the Army Heritage Trail, the Army Heritage and Education Center plans three additional buildings for the near future.
The Visitor and Education Center, expected to open in 2008, will serve as the entrance point of all visitors to AHEC campus. It is expected to have a lecture hall, cafe, museum shop, and other facilities for hosting large groups--such as from veterans associations and schools--and providing educational programming.
The U.S. Army Conservation Center, slated to open in 2009, will improve paper and object conservation of AHEC collections by providing facilities for conservation and analytical laboratories, artifact storage, conservation science research, and public educational opportunities. The building will not be generally open to the public.
The 50,000-square-foot (4,600 m2) Army Heritage Museum is scheduled to open to the public in 2011. Museum staff will use the facility to exhibit its many artifacts relating to the service of individual soldiers in the U.S. Army.
Affiliated organizations
The Army Heritage and Education Center is supported by a private foundation, the Army Heritage Center Foundation, which helps the center with development and educational efforts. It oversees fundraising for the construction of the Visitor and Education Center and the Army Heritage Museum.
The center is a component of the National Museum of the United States Army, based in Fort Belvoir, Virginia. The National Museum of the United States Army will open a national U.S. Army museum in 2013 along the Potomac River in northern Virginia. The Army Heritage and Education Center supports that museum with its own research and exhibit facilities.
Both as an army museum and as a military history research facility, the center is subordinate to the U.S. Army Center of Military History in Fort McNair, Washington, D.C., which is "responsible for the appropriate use of history throughout the U.S. Army"[3].
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