Treat your audience to a story from Chandler’s fascinating history. Chandler Museum offers insightful and engaging presentations to community organizations, libraries, schools, and other groups. Book your free presentation and we'll bring history to you.
While staying at La Hacienda near Downtown Chandler, Architect Frank Lloyd Wright built a highly detailed, large-scale model of Broadacre City, his ideal suburban community. Although the finished model impressed 40,000 viewers in New York City before touring the country, Wright never finalized his plans for a new American way of living. This talk will highlight the lasting impact of this Chandler project on Wright’s later career. Presented by Jody Crago.
Born into a Jewish family in 1924 Poland, Samuel Soldinger found himself and his family confined to the Kraków Ghetto after the Germans invaded. While everyone around him died, Soldinger survived the Holocaust working in Oskar Schindler’s factory. After the war, he learned to cut diamonds and moved to New York City. In 1962, Soldinger arrived in Chandler to manage the new Harry Winston diamond processing plant on Pecos Road. Trace Soldinger’s historic journey in this moving talk. Presented by Jody Crago.
Explore Chandler’s early history, when residents arrived with dreams of cultivating the desert. We set the stage with the need to get water to the area, explain the canal system from Mesa to the south Valley, and reveal how Dr. A.J. Chandler facilitated business deals as he sold land and reacquired it when people could not pay their mortgages. Learn about the Desert Land Act of 1877, the Consolidated Canal Company, Land Sale Day in Chandler in 1912, and the Congressional investigation that followed. Presented by Jody Crago.
Zora Folley, a professional boxer from Chandler, got his shot at the heavyweight title when he fought Muhammad Ali on March 22, 1967, in New York’s Madison Square Garden. With television coverage blacked out and no radio broadcast, it looked like Chandler residents would miss out on their hometown hero’s biggest moment. Find out how Chandlerites were able to overcome these obstacles and find a unique way to experience the biggest fight night in Chandler history. Presented by Jody Crago.
Hear a thought-provoking talk about how and why Japanese immigrants came to America, and what led up to the Japanese internment camps of WWII. Listen to the stories of people who were incarcerated behind barbed wire at the Gila River Internment Camp, located only a few miles from Chandler, because war suddenly made friends and neighbors look like the enemy. Presented by Jody Crago.
Photographer Dorothea Lange traveled to Chandler three times in the late 1930s and early 1940s, capturing iconic images of a transformative time. Her work revealed life in an auto camp, on the Farm Security Administration Cooperative Farm, within a migrant family, and more. This talk will explore the impact of the Great Depression on Chandler by highlighting Lange’s subjects and stories as told through the lens of her camera. Presented by Tiffani Egnor.
For Teachers/Schools
Chandler Museum’s Educator Resources
From field trips to outreach trunks to lesson plans, the museum provides many ways to include local history in your classroom. A member of the Chandler Museum Education Department will provide insights into all the resources the museum offers to local educators. See the contents of one of the museum’s outreach trunks and get a sense of the types of lesson plans that will work for your students.
How to do Research in the Archive
Do you have students researching local history topics? Do you want students to learn the methods, procedures, and best practices of historical research? Museum staff will provide tips for your students on how they can research the museum’s archive online and in person. This presentation can be tailored to fit the specific needs of students’ projects.