Columbia River Maritime Museum opens Mariners Hall to the public Nov. 20
The Astoria waterfront along the Columbia River, where the museum campus sits. Photo: Tedder, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
The Columbia River Maritime Museum will open its new Warnock Building, home of Mariners Hall, to the public at 1 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 20.
Regular admission applies on opening day, and members get in free, The Astorian reported this week. The building sits on the museum campus at 1792 Marine Drive.
What’s inside
Portland firm Opsis Architecture designed the two-level hall, which runs about 24,500 square feet. It holds 19 vessels, a first-order Fresnel lighthouse lens and a full-size U.S. Coast Guard helicopter hung from a ceiling of large glue-laminated beams.
Many of the boats have local roots. The Astorian listed the Merrimac, a 1938 wooden yacht built by Astoria Marine Construction Company; a fishing boat from Astoria’s Bumble Bee shipyard; a 60-foot racing shell built by George Pocock; and the 52-foot motor lifeboat Triumph II. There is also a log bronc, the small, stubby workboat used to push logs around rivers and mill ponds.
The museum says the hall puts on display hundreds of artifacts and boats that had been sitting in storage, some of which visitors will be able to board. The building also adds about 3,700 square feet for science, technology, engineering, arts and math programs, a dedicated classroom, a children’s play area and a covered tank where students can build and pilot remotely operated underwater vehicles.
The lobby features a large rope installation in the shape of a wave by Port Townsend, Washington, artist Margie McDonald. Other exhibits expand on Indigenous maritime history and environmental change on the river.
A $34 million campaign
Construction began in November 2024. According to the museum’s campus transformation page, it had raised $32.9 million toward a $34 million goal as of June. The museum says it owns the site and has operated without debt since its founding in 1962.
Mariners Hall connects to the original 1982 museum building by a covered walkway. The project also adds landscaping and wayfinding around the campus and raises parking from 170 to 205 spaces.
“It’s about the human experience, the mariner, hence Mariners Hall,” executive director Bruce Jones says on the museum’s site, describing a focus on the people who built, ran and maintained the boats.
Jones told The Astorian he “couldn’t be prouder” of the team that built it.
The latest step in a long build-out
The hall is the latest in a string of projects on the waterfront campus. The museum expanded its main building in 2002, restored the historic Astoria train depot as the Barbey Maritime Center in 2013, and built the Warnock Commons and model boat pond in 2020. In 2024 it remodeled about 11,000 square feet of existing galleries and added two Indigenous exhibits, including one developed with the Chinook Indian Nation.
Another piece is still coming. The David Campbell, an 87-foot former Portland Fire & Rescue fireboat donated to the museum, was placed on the campus in July. The museum says work on its display area and boarding gangway will resume once Mariners Hall is substantially done, with the goal of opening the boat to visitors this fall.
The museum is open daily from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Details are at crmm.org.
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