Well, I wouldn't pay the arm-and-a-leg stupid high-priced admission they charge for the crappy, crummy, boring museums they have here in Pittsburgh, the most culturally bereft place in the country (You know the drill. Doff your hat and worship the ground robber-baron, mill-worker-murdering fascist pig Andrew Carnegie spat on, and the dumb yinzer yokels here think looking at a bunch of replicas of dinosaur models is a MUSEUM) but I grew up with some nice museums back home in Cleveland, especially the Western Reserve Historial Society. I love to look at old every day things people used. But then being keen on flea markets, used bookstores and the like to find my treasured old 1920's magazines and 78 records, it stands to reason why I would.
The coziest and to my mind most fascinating museum was in my childhood home-town of Bedford, Ohio -- suburban Cleveland but has a quaint little old-fashioned "town square" and aside from the development sprawl on the outskirts of town, time ground to a halt -- in the 1970's I could easily step into the 1870's in a blink. If you could see and smell the quiet, musty, perpetually silent Bedford Historial Society Museum, housed in the 1874 building which was once the Town Hall - now restored but never renovated - you could easily get happily lost in another era; leaving the place was like coming out of a dream, and everything was hands-on: stereoscopic pictures, you know those old sepia photos one viewed through a hand-held lens contraption which made 140 year old pictures look 3D; books, books, and more wonderful books which browsers were allowed to purchase for mere coins; each small floor-creaking room full of dummies dressed in authentic old clothing one could reach out and touch (and this ol' idiot had a blast looking at those dummies!); rooms full of pots, pans, yard tools, early radios and yes, Victrolas. Maybe it was Bedford's garbage heap of possessions from the once-were-alive, but it was a fascinating one and had that "You Are There" appeal. It was the perfect place to while away a chilly overcast autumn afternoon.
There was very little to gape at behind a glass; it was all out there for us to examine. A couple of elderly showcases lit by flickering fluorescent tubes displayed the Untouchable items: WWI weaponry, letters soldiers wrote to their families, and the unopened 1918 packet of Wrigley's Spearmint Chewing Gum fondly remembvered and snickered over by every class field trip our elementary school across the street too there.
So, would the Putnam Museum in Davenport be found so wanting to you? I think it'd be a wonderful place to visit, although I've never been. Alex, I wonder if because of your youth you are prevented from getting to see REAL museums, or are just subject to all most people nowadays are experiencing: the boring, brightly lit, modernistic, soul-less institutions where you press a button and a recorded voice yaps about something historical, and you look at pictures of pictures behind 3 layers of glass and innumerable computer screens. I'd hate that too. And think it was idiotic.