History Comes To Life With Raynham Museum's Augmented Reality App

OYSTER BAY, NY — Raynham Hall Museum in Oyster Bay is coming out with an augmented reality app for visitors.

The experience, dubbed "1776AR," launches Dec. 2. It begins in the museum's education center, with four digitally-created portraits that come to life when guests interact with them using an app downloaded to their phone or tablet. The tour takes visitors all around the museum and its grounds before finishing inside the historic Townsend house.

The museum was once the home of Samuel Townsend, a spy for George Washington during the American Revolution. Townsend, who was also a prominent merchant in Oyster Bay, had to give much of his home to the Redcoats during the war.

"1776AR was designed to reveal the amazing people and stories of our past to people of today who are comfortable being connected with the latest in augmented and extended reality technologies," said Harriet Gerard Clark, the museum's executive director. "The storytelling medium has changed, but the relevance of our collective past has not. We need to know our past in order to know who we really are."

According to a press release, 1776AR is the result of the vision and leadership of the Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation, combined with the expertise of 360XR, a U.S.-based company that has provided technical and creative services to fulfill the Gardiner Foundation's vision, in cooperation with multiple Long Island historical sites.

"We are delighted to help the Friends of Raynham Hall re-interpret this important historic site," said Kathryn M. Curran, executive director of the Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation. "RDLGF's confidence in the educational outreach offered by Raynham Hall is such that we have chosen this site to be the initial offering for our augmented reality experience, 1776AR. This exciting and innovative program is now available to bring this and other of our historic sites to life."