Revere Museum of Discovery & Innovation opens Jan. 2

More than 10 years of hard work will come to fruition on Friday, January 2, as the Paul Revere Museum of Discovery and Innovation (MoDI) opens its doors to the public at the Revere Heritage Site in downtown Canton.

Steve Schottenfeld, a board member of the Revere & Son Heritage Trust, and his granddaughter, Rosie McGowan, 21 months, at a museum preview earlier this month

With three stories of interactive exhibits in the historic horse barn, and another exhibit honoring America’s 250th in the copper rolling mill above Northern Spy restaurant, MoDI has experiences for all ages. It will be open Thursdays through Sundays each week moving forward — 1-7 p.m. on Thursdays and Fridays and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays.

Paul Revere is, of course, famous for his midnight ride out of Boston to warn the minutemen at Lexington and Concord that British troops were on the march. Every school child knows about that. But that was not the end of Revere’s contributions to his country. He played a role in another revolution: the Industrial Revolution. Revere was a businessperson extraordinaire whose innovations and entrepreneurship led to manufacturing processes still in use today. Revere founded a silver manufactory, an iron manufactory, a brass and bronze manufactory, and in 1801 began his most audacious venture — a copper manufactory in Canton, Massachusetts.

After nearly a year of experimentation and at great cost to his personal fortune, Revere became the first American to successfully roll copper sheeting. In 1802, his copper covered the dome of the Massachusetts State House, and in 1803, his copper sheathed the hull of the USS Constitution. The Revere Copper Company was a prominent part of Canton life for generations.

Just a decade ago, however, the Paul Revere Heritage Site was nine acres of polluted former manufacturing land. The Revere & Son Heritage Trust was established by the state of Massachusetts and the town of Canton to turn that polluted land into a beautiful park, and to transform the two remaining mid-19th century Revere Copper Company structures into the Paul Revere Museum of Discovery and Innovation.

The trust raised $7 million to complete the task. It retained the services of Experience Design Studios in Providence — a firm with nationwide exhibit-creation expertise — to design and build a fitting tribute to Paul Revere’s innovative spirit. Experience Design brought in Boston Productions, a local media design company, to create a variety of interactive digital games and design challenges. The result is four floors — three in the historic horse barn, and one in the rolling mill — of exciting, interactive exhibits that challenge visitors to “think like Revere,” imagining and marketing their own virtual products, designing their own virtual manufacturing site, walking through the site as it might have existed over nearly 200 years ago, and much more.

Last spring, the trust hired John Morton as the inaugural executive director for the Paul Revere MoDI. Morton has a degree in museum studies from UMass Amherst and spent time working for the Trustees of Reservations here in Massachusetts, and at the former Astors’ Beechwood Mansion in Newport, Rhode Island. He had been teaching American history at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, but jumped at the chance to take the helm of this brand-new museum.

“This is such a rare opportunity to build something new — a museum that is about history, but also about designing and brainstorming and building,” Morton said. “We can teach people about Paul Revere and about Canton history, and also introduce them to inventors and innovators that work here in New England today. And then hopefully we can inspire them to get creative themselves.”

To learn more about the Paul Revere Museum of Discovery and Innovation, go to paulreveremuseum.org/modi.

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Posted by Canton Citizen on Jan 1 2026. Filed under News. Both comments and pings are currently closed.