“Clearly Boal Mansion is a vital part of both Centre County’s past and its present understanding of its heritage… What a treasure the house and chapel are for Centre County and Pennsylvania.” -- Lee Stout, Leadership Centre County and Penn State Library

On-Site Tours of the Columbus Chapel & Boal Mansion Museum

Tours include the typical guided tour of the Museum which takes about 90 minutes and the special "Active learning" stations tour for grades four to six. Click here for the special "Active learning" tour. The regular ninety-minute guided tour is described below:

1. The Boal Mansion, home of eight generations of Boals who have shaped America and Centre County from pioneer days to the present, with the original family, furnishings, tools and weapons still here.

“The generations of the Boal family who have occupied the estate evoke an understanding of time and of many of the themes that dominate the study of American history.”  -- Federal Institute for Museum Services, Museum Assessment Program

The guided tour of the Boal Mansion Museum covers American history from the pioneer days of the immigrant David Boal who was a Captain in the Revolutionary War, through his son David, founder and namesake of Boalsburg, and his son George, one of the founders of public education in Centre County and first president of the Centre County Agricultural Society in 1852 when they petitioned the state to locate the Farmer's High School here -- today known as Penn State University.

The fifth generation, Colonel Theodore Davis Boal, founder of the adjacent 28th Division Shrine, home of the Pennsylvania Military Museum, took part in the international adventures typical of Americans in the early 1900's, marrying European aristocracy, and adding a ballroom and chapel to change the family farm to the family estate.

The sixth generation, Ambassador Pierre Boal, served all over the world. His daughter, Mimi,  married the Governor of Maryland, Blair Lee, descendant of the distinguished Virginia family whose members include Richard Henry Lee, signer of the Declaration of Independence, and the Civil War General Robert E. Lee.

Museum CEO Christopher Lee is the eighth generation. He serves as an elected municipal official and a voting member of the Federally-designated Centre County Metropolitan Planning Organization which allocates all Federal money for transportation in Centre County. He also is a co-founder in 1973 and current president of the Boalsburg Village Conservancy, a group dedicated to preservation in Boalsburg and Harris Township.

Students connect with their identity as Americans by touring the Boal Mansion. The family never moved and the original furnishings, artwork, tools and weapons, including stage coaches and wagons are on display.

2. The Columbus Chapel, a complete centuries-old Spanish chapel interior inherited from the Columbus family by their descendants in the Boal family and imported to Boalsburg in 1909. The Columbus Chapel is the strongest connection with Christopher Columbus in North America and contains Columbus' own Admiral's Desk, original European masterpiece artwork dating back to the fifteenth century and religious relics including two pieces of the True Cross on which Jesus died.

The Columbus Chapel is something else. When students step into the Columbus Chapel, they step into Spain in the time of Christopher Columbus. Nowhere else in America can they experience this connection both with the Old World and with Columbus himself.

The guided tour includes a consideration of the many views of Christopher Columbus, from non-English founding father in 1792, to Catholic immigrant in 1892, to invader in 1992. Through it all, he remains the man who opened the door from the Old World to the New World, beginning this American experiment that continues today.

“I told the students that what they had just visited was a small version of some of the great European museums – with artifacts, portraits, and relics similar to what I have seen in the Louvre in Paris and the British Museum in London.”  -- Fourth Grade Teacher in Centre County

3. The Museum Buildings. Three small buildings contain weapons, tools and wagons from the many generations of the Boals and their European ancestors. CEO Christopher Lee quips that it represents "nine generations of deferred garage sales," but a closer look reveals original Pennsylvania long rifles, medieval armor from the Columbus Castle in Spain, a beautifully-restored 1850's Pennsylvania stage coach, a buckboard buggy built in Boalsburg in 1902, fine china from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and so much more.

“Your Boal Mansion tour changed my life. It showed me that you can be smart and still be OK.  It inspired me not to be a slacker.” --Tenth Grader, State College High School, part of the youth program of Leadership Centre County

Group tours can be scheduled year-round at any time of day by advance arrangement. Regular guided tours of the Columbus Chapel and Boal Mansion Museum take about ninety minutes. The group rate for visitors ages 7 to 11 is $4. The group rate for visitors age twelve and older is $8. Teachers with their students are admitted free of charge.

Rates for the special "Active learning" tour are the same as the regular tour. The special tour can take both a morning and an afternoon and involves four to six stations (click here for details). The rates are the same as the regular group tour.

There is no charge for the in-school presentations with slides or PowerPoint images. (Click here for page with details about that).

For more information or to schedule a tour or school presentation , contact Christopher Lee, CEO, the Boal Mansion Museum at (814) 466-6210, PO Box 116 Boalsburg PA 16827 or email office@boalmuseum.com