Charles River Museum of Industry & Innovation

Very cool place! We went here for a special event for the Mass Air and Space Museum. We were only able to see the Waltham Watch Company exhibit and the Owen Bicycle Company Exhibit, but there will be a new Aviation exhibit opening soon. We will be going back for the new exhibit, there are so many great historical things to see.

I should note that I’m reviewing this as an event space, not a museum. Others’ comments here seem to echo my impression, which is that as a museum it’s in a very sad state of disrepair and deserves better than what it’s got in the way of curation.
As an event space, though, I was pretty well pleased. The event manager, Jill, is a very nice young woman who was enthusiastic about my company holding our anniversary party in the museum. However, when we came to do our initial visit, we had a hell of a time getting to the place. Punching in the address of the museum takes you to a labyrinthine parking lot where, it turns out, you can’t even park for more than an hour, even if you can find the door to the museum. Calling Jill on the phone didn’t prove helpful; she couldn’t really place where we were from our verbal descriptions, and tried to direct us to a public parking lot that *also* turned out to be hell to find. Finally we just left the car in an unmetered spot and prayed we wouldn’t get a ticket. CRMI definitely needs some stellar maps on its website if it wants to bring people in; it took me three times visiting the place to figure out where to go, and how to tell other people how to get there. If you’re going to visit, my advice is to give your GPS the address for Donovan’s Alignment on Pine Street instead– that will lead you to the entrance of the Embassy Parking Lot, from which you can walk over a short bridge that takes you right to the museum’s door.
The space itself is gorgeous. The machines and old cars are super cool, and the cases full of old watches are awesome to peruse. As others have noted, there’s not much in the way of description of what the pieces are or where they came from– but if you’re not there to learn, it makes a killer spot for a cocktail hour. The catering company we used do events at the museum a lot, so they knew just where to stage everything to maximum effect. And the banquet room upstairs was perfect– we had about 100 in attendance, and it felt full without being claustrophobic. The party went over great, everyone was gushing about how cool the space was, and it photographed beautifully as well.
Now, if they could just find someone to take care of their exhibits…

We drove a half hour to visit this museum, since the Google page listed three hours as 10 — 5. We arrived to a poorly labeled sign that led us to the back entrance, and after finding the exhibits, a very curt woman told us that it’s never open on weekends and that we should have seen that on the web site. Most folks use the Google place info for directions and hours. It looked like it was being used for a wedding. Just so odd that a museum wouldn’t be open on the weekends. What a shame!

This formerly wonderful little museum has pretty well gone out of the museum business to become a wedding venue. It’s only open a few hours a week at this point, and there is no interpretation available. The exhibits are falling into disrepair, and the people who used to be there to talk about the machinery and demonstrate are gone. They seem to have totally alienated their strongest supporters. So sad to lose this wonderful resource for the Waltham community. It’s a great space, so probably will do well as a wedding site.

Machine-​Age Paradise. Worth at least 1 visit from which you’ll see if it’s worth your going back. Highlights include watching vintage workshop machines actually operating on their pulley-​drive belts. The Model T is great, but not so well-​explained. Kids enjoyed playing on the 1940s-​era telephone switchboard (plug-​board) once it was eplained how to play «operator.»
Bicycle and locomotive history too.
Too-​often closed for events and doesn’t quite gel as a teaching museum. Hard for non-​engineers to answer the questions «what am I looking at?» or «what was it’s importance» and «what did I just learn?»

I’m a fan, but this is now a sad sad place. The museum suffered two big hits; a flood, and a scandal that led to the old management getting sacked.
The machines (and we came for the machines) are free to visit, while the new management puts its focus on other types of exhibits. All the machine room exhibit signs have been removed «because they no longer meet our focus and had historical errors» according to the director. The machines sit ungreased, unmaintained and unwatched. Apparently there are no volunteers to wind the clocks or adjust belts or windings. The director told me they are getting rid of equipment and in general don’t welcome donations any more. The interactive exhibits have by and large been removed.
A nice young volunteer managed the front desk when I came by. He tried to interpret some exhibits, but it quickly became apparent he knew little. When I offered to show him what several machines did he was not at all interested.
This really appears to be the «Former Charles River Museum of Industry & Innovation», and the new «Waltham Museum of Something Else». I brought kids, and because I could interpret what I saw they had a good time. Other than that it would have been a real letdown.

I highly recommend the Charles River Museum of Industry and Innovation as a wedding venue. The location is beautiful and the historic venue allows your wedding to flow. For instance, my husband and I had the ceremony in the park just outside of the museum (the museum and park are right on the Charles river and there is a cute footbridge), cocktail hour in the museum/​downstairs, and the reception in their main event room upstairs (the Jackson room). One of the great things about the museum is that they don’t charge you extra to use their tables and chairs. In fact, they don’t charge you extra to use anything that they have, which was not the case at a few other venues I had researched. They do have some restrictions on which caterers and alcohol providers you can use, but we LOVED our vendors (Gordon’s for alcohol and Caper’s Catering). Jen was our contact and she was great about getting back to all of my emails promptly.

Such a unique space for an off-​beat or traditional wedding.
My husband and I had our October 2013 wedding at CRMII and couldn’t be happier with the result. Though we had a misty, grey day, our ceremony in Landry Park still went off without a hitch and we had beautiful foliage for a backdrop along with the dam and river.
All of our guests loved the venue. We sprang for a tour guide so our guests could be entertained during cocktail hour, and there are tons of interactive exhibits for people to play with too! (At the time, there was an old-​school pong video game set up which our friends loved.) It felt cramped at times for our 130+ guests but only because we had quite a few stationary appetizer displays one the first floor for cocktail hour and we wanted a huge dance floor upstairs in the Jackson Room. No one seemed to mind however, as guests were free to move through the museum space throughout the night and utilize the lounge to get away from the action if needed.
The museum is a bit hard to find (even with directions some of our guests got misplaced) so I recommend working with a bus company (we used Local Motion) to get guests to the right spot, especially if they are staying at one of the nearby hotels like the Westin. Also, I highly recommend an after party at Watch City around the corner. We shut the place down!

Great venue for a wedding!
We had a late November wedding @ the CRMI.
Our guests (adults and kids) loved the space and the exhibits. The hall was just right for our 130 guests + a DJ and dance floor. The room off to the side was great for our private ceremony and then for an ice cream station during the reception.
We built our own photo booth, which we set up in the watch exhibit section upstairs, next to the nice big bar that our caterer set up.
Great location, and wonderful staff — Christine was very organized and on top of things throughout the planning w/​multiple site visits, and Damian and the other operations guys on the night of the wedding were on the ball all night, from helping an elderly guest w/​a wheelchair to troubleshooting a lighting issue that the lighting company missed.
The only drawback to the place is that parking is across a foot bridge in the Pine/​Moody street lot, but it’s a nice walk over the Charles. Otherwise, a great (+ very reasonably priced) venue w/​awesome staff.

As my bride and I began planning our wedding, we had a strong desire to NOT be in a traditional wedding space. Neither of us had a strong faith tradition and since I’m a professional event planner I was loathe to have our big day at a hotel or wedding factory. We also had a caterer we really wanted to work with so strongly preferred a venue that would allow outside caterers. Although we live in Boston, we decided to look into venues 20 – 30 minutes outside of the city — so hotel rates for our guests (²⁄₃ of whom traveled) would be lower. Our search brought us to Charles River Museum of Industry and Innovation a quirky museum that’s got a beautiful and recently renovated event space.
The downstairs consists of the entrance and gift shop (this area is being worked on, but wasn’t great to look at), an exhibit hall that rotates what is on display (you’ll book without knowing what it will be on your big day –we lucked out, it was an exhibit of old video games like Atari) and a large hall that houses their permanent exhibit. This is where our cocktail hour took place — among interesting old machines (which the docent will happily demonstrate) and a really cool old car that was the perfect centerpiece for an aerial full wedding guest photo.
The real selling point though is the upstairs event space, with it’s wood floors, beautiful exposed brick and floor to ceiling windows overlooking the Charles River. The building was originally a factory and has a really interesting history connected to the labor movement and the Industrial Revolution.
Christine was easy to work with and allowed us and our caterer to visit a couple of times as we figured out where everything went. They let us use 72″ rounds and black chairs. Important to note that the upstairs lounge where we had the ceremony maxed out at about 80 chairs, although we did see that some folks had their ceremony downstairs. Our caterer had no trouble working with the venue and even said their staff went out of their way.

Lots of fun Things to look at and explore. The main areas they have old train engines, fire trucks, printing presses. There old watches deconstructed, tandem bicycles, telephone booths. There’s a hands on section where you can make your own motion picture or play an old school Atari (is it finally time to grow up when your childhood toys are in a museum?) Upstairs is a nice space for a wedding and reception area. Outside is scenic along the Charles river.

We attended our friends’ wedding here a few months ago and absolutely ADORED the space. It’s got a cool, vintage/​steam punk kinda vibe which I loved. Very picturesque.

This museum has a terrific collection of the tools and machines that once powered several Waltham factories. It is neat getting a first hand look at how textiles, bicycles and watches were produced 100+ years ago.
One suggestion to improve the museum experience is to include more descriptions at each artifact explaining how they work and what their purpose was. There was no central narrative to any exhibit and that would help improve the visitor’s experience.

I thought this one this place was the pits. We went over the summer, there was a city wide event and the museum was free. I can’t imagine someone actually paying to enter.
The museum is poorly lit, dusty, and boring. The exhibits are cluttered and not very interesting. The ‘best’ part was the watch exhibit on the second floor but it’ll only hold your interest for 10 mins. My kids (8 and 4) didnt like it. The highlight was sitting on the buggy but otherwise they really weren’t interested in any of the displays.
Save your money and go somewhere else!

Just got married here! And have been to the steampunk festival, and have come here to play with friends. I love the museum, and they do a great job reaching out into the community and getting people interested.
As an event space, its highlights are the obvious aesthetic value, the interactivity of having an art exhibit and museum space for your guests to wander about in, and the relative affordability versus similarly sized venues in the Boston area. The drawback is that they are under-​resourced, from staffing to technology, so our support through the planning process was at times wanting.
However the organization functions – with respect to a board, and the actual museum staff, and events coordination – there is an obvious communication breakdown, Work was being done at the museum leading up to our wedding which we had no idea about beforehand, and I don’t think the staff did either. I would take off two stars for this except I don’t want this review to reflect badly on the staff themselves, who really did an exceptional job.
All this work coming, as I have mentioned, rather as a surprise to the staff, it seems like they had a tough job ahead of them when they arrived the day of the wedding and they really rose to the challenge. Together with the utterly fabulous Swartz Catering team, they beat order into the chaos and we had an amazing evening.
I would have given this five stars (noting again that my above issues are with the organizing body, not the museum itself/​the staff I dealt with) except that I was disappointed by the way our rehearsal was handled. We were not allowed into the event room itself due to the unexpected floor work, yet we had paid for the space; and our concerns about the in-​the-​process-​of-​being-​replaced floor – for instance, our first dance was a tango, and we had no idea if it would be a danceable surface and had not rented a dance floor – were not dealt with in a constructive or reassuring way.
I had a lot of locally-​based guests tell me that they were so glad to have been introduced to the museum this way, and would be coming back with their families to explore it further. I recommend it highly as a museum and as an event space, though with the latter, just be prepared to be an active advocate for your process and needs.

Grab some pencils in the gift shop. They make great souvenirs if you or someone you know is interested in design or technology.
Nice area. There’s a park nearby. Some cool architecture in the old factory building. There’s two floors.
Some cool exhibits like a steam-​powered fire truck and antique bicycles,
If you’re new to Waltham you might want to check out some of the shops and restaurants on Moody Street. There’s also some gigantic old factories on Crescent Street. Waltham is known as The Watch City because they used to manufacture watches, among other things.

Just an update, post-​wedding:
Everything went great, our guests loved the location, and Elln was excellent the day of, helping out tremendously. If you want a unique wedding in the Boston area be sure to check it out.

I took my fiancé here on Friday for his birthday as a surprise. After googling «steampunk museum», this was the first place that came up! I had never even heard of it but I was so excited to go since it looked so cool.
We were not disappointed. So many neat things to look at — the best part is that you are able to touch and play with some of the exhibits — a rare feature. I think my fiancé almost passed out when he saw the Ford Model A just hanging out.
While not very big (we were there a little over an hour), still very informational and funky. Very fun to bring kids to or if you’re just interested in this type of stuff!

First of all, the place is on the list of National Register of Historic Places as the US’ FIRST factory, begun in 1814, as the Boston Manufacturing Co. textile mill. It was here that each step in the manufacturing of cotton material was completed. Here are numerous steam engines, a boiler which I assume was once part of the factory, a gallery devoted to the Walthum Watch Co. (ie watches and devices involved in the production) and operable machines found in a machine shop during the day.

I went here with my folks a few months before the flooding that damaged a lot of their lower exhibits.
While small compared to the Deutches Museum in Munich or the Museum of Industry in Chicago, the museum does more than hold its own with exhibits of actual local artifacts from the nascent Industrial Revolution that sprung up from the banks of the Charles to sweep the nation.
Waltham may be known as ‘Watch City’ thanks to the Waltham Watch Company, who made quality timekeeping accessible to the common man, but it was also home to manufacturers of bicycles, musical instruments, contemporary sporting goods and even cars. The factory buildings from that revolution are almost gone now, but they were the prototype for mills further north and south that produced goods that put America on the world stage as an industrial nation. This museum is in one of the few remaining buildings from that boom.
For fairly short money (~$ 4, I think) it’s a nice place to walk around and drink in the offset type from the 1800’s, marvel at tiny gears and pinion shafts in the watch display cases upstairs, and read about the history of technology in early America.
I hope they can recover from the flooding soon. I’m glad I got to see it before the waters rose, but I wish everyone else could too.