Founded in 1930, The Mariners' Museum is one of the of the largest international maritime history museums in the world. Over 60,000 square feet of gallery space hold approximately 35,000 artifacts including rare figureheads, handcrafted ship models, Civil War ironclad USS Monitor artifacts, paintings, small craft from around the world, and much more. The Library at the Mariners' Museum holds the largest maritime history collection in the Western Hemisphere. With its rich collections and international scope the Library is a premier source for maritime research. The collections consist of over 1.75 million items including books, magazines, rare books, manuscripts, maps and charts, vessel plans, newspaper articles, photographs, Chris-Craft archives and The Mariners' Museum archives.