National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum

National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum

The Hall of Fame in 2020
Established	1936; 89 years ago (1936) (Baseball) Dedicated June 12, 1939
Location	Cooperstown, New York, U.S.
Coordinates	42°42′0″N 74°55′24″W / 42.70000°N 74.92333°W / 42.70000; -74.92333
Type	Professional sports hall of fame
Key holdings	August Herrmann Papers Gene Mack Cartoons Roger Kahn Papers Federal League Litigation [1]
Collections	Photo Archive National Baseball Hall of Fame Library (Manuscripts, Books, Publications) Recorded Media Collection Artifact Collection [1]
Collection size	250,000 photographs 14,000 hours of moving images and sound recordings 40,000 three-dimensional artifacts [1]
Visitors	260,000/year (average as of 2018)[2]
Founder	Stephen Carlton Clark
President	Josh Rawitch[3] (since 2021)
Chairperson	Jane Forbes Clark[3] (Board of Directors)
Curator	Tom Shieber[3] (Senior Curator)
Website	baseballhall.org

The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum is a history museum and hall of fame in Cooperstown, New York, operated by a private foundation. It serves as the central collection and gathering space for the history of baseball in the United States displaying baseball-related artifacts and exhibits, honoring those who have excelled in playing, managing, and serving the sport. The Hall's motto is "Preserving History, Honoring Excellence, Connecting Generations". Cooperstown is often used as shorthand (or a metonym) for the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. The museum also established and manages the process for honorees into the Hall of Fame.

The Hall of Fame was established in 1939 by Stephen Carlton Clark, an heir to the Singer Sewing Machine fortune. Clark sought to bring tourists to the village hurt by the Great Depression, which reduced the local tourist trade, and Prohibition, which devastated the local hops industry. Clark constructed the Hall of Fame's building, which was dedicated on June 12, 1939. (His granddaughter, Jane Forbes Clark, is the current chairman of the board of directors.) The mythology that future Civil War hero Abner Doubleday invented baseball in Cooperstown in the 1830s was instrumental in the placement and early marketing of the Hall.

An expanded library and research facility opened in 1994.^[4] Dale Petroskey became the organization's president in 1999.^[5] In 2002, the Hall launched Baseball as America, a traveling exhibit that toured ten American museums over six years. The Hall of Fame has since also sponsored educational programming on the Internet to bring the Hall of Fame to schoolchildren who might not visit. The Hall and Museum completed a series of renovations in spring 2005. The Hall of Fame also presents an annual exhibit at FanFest at the Major League Baseball All-Star Game.