The Glenn L. Martin Maryland Aviation Museum is actively pursuing a new home at or near the Martin State Airport. This will be a landmark structure that will house a vibrant, modern Museum with vastly expanded visibility, programs, and collections.

Education and Exhibits

The new Museum will attract individuals of all ages with changing exhibits and active programming for entertainment and enrichment.

The expanded Museum will provide enhanced education programs, especially for school groups. Interactive, hands-on exhibits, computer simulations, activity and classrooms, and bus parking will allow teachers to expose Maryland school children to lessons in math, science, geography, history, leadership, technological change, and the future opportunities of air and space travel.

The expanded Museum would be outside of the airport security area.

Archives and Collections

More space will allow the Museum to expand and better preserve its archives and artifacts, especially historic aircraft that cannot be displayed outdoors.

More documents and more aircraft can be preserved, perhaps even one of the huge Martin Mars seaplanes still flying. Artifacts of aerospace history from all over Maryland, now threatened, can be rescued and included in a statewide collection.

A New Community Landmark

Displaying aircraft indoors requires a large and dramatic landmark building. This space will be able to attract special events, both private and organizational.

Exemplifying its rich aviation heritage, the new Museum will provide a memorable destination in the revitalized Middle River community of tomorrow.

Expansion Sites

With its beautiful waterfront, rich aviation heritage, active airport, and ground-transportation links enhanced by the completion of Maryland Route 43, Middle River is a superb location for a Maryland Aviation Museum. Over the course of nine months, the Glenn L. Martin Maryland Aviation Museum board of directors has, with professional advice, considered a dozen specific sites for the new Museum.

Considerations have included:

• connections to the community's aviation heritage
• market demographics (especially in relation to other regional attractions)
• impact on traffic and the environment
• favorable impact on Martin State Airport
• attractive water and airport views
• road, rail, air, and water access
• community “fit” and benefits

The site of the old Martin seaplane ramp, near the end of the main runway of today's Martin State Airport, Strawberry Point offers both spectacular waterfront views as well as actual airport take-off and landing activity.

At a spot that is not in demand for residential or commercial development, the Museum will have space to grow from an initial 29,500 square feet to a dramatic 190,000. Its park-like waterfront setting will be unique among American aviation museums, a magnet not just to automobile tourists but to flyers, boaters (including water-taxi passengers), and rail travelers in tomorrow's Middle River community.

A setting for local events as well, the Museum will be a familiar destination and a point of pride for the citizens of Maryland.

Exhibit Opportunities

Maryland Firsts:

• Balloon Ascension in 1784
• Aircraft Carrier (Civil War Balloons, 1860s)
• Military Training Base (College Park)
• Commuter Airline (Henson)

• Pioneers
• Lindberg boom in the 30s
• WWII Expansion
• Cold War
• Present
• Future--?

• Personalities
• Company Histories
• Private Airfields
• Airline Operations
• General Aviation
• Flight Training
• Sport Aviation
• Public Service Aviation
• Military Activities and Basing
• NASA-Facilities, Developments

• Aircraft Product Chronologies
• Missile and Spacecraft Developments
• Thrust Reversers and Aerospace Systems
• Vertical Launch Systems

• Methods, Innovations
• Remotely Piloted Vehicles (RPV)
• Electronics in Aerospace
• Research, Inventions and Spin-offs

• Housing Expansion
• Working Environment
• Women in the Work Force (Rosies)
• Sport Leagues and Activities
• Social Life and Living Environment

• Roads, Retailing and Education
• Woman and African-American Aviators

• Land and Seaplanes
• Spacecraft and Missiles
• Aviation and Space Science
• Experimental Flight Test
• Maryland from Above
• Hands on Exhibits (Learning to Fly)
• Educational Classroom Facilities
• Oral Histories
• Archives and Research
• Event Facilities (Auditorium, Theatre)
• Speaker Programs/Membership Events
• Restaurant/Catering
• Museum Shop
• MD Aerospace Hall of Fame