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Opened February 2000 · 111 W. Jefferson Blvd., downtown
A hospital built a children's museum. HealthWorks! Kids' Museum opened in February 2000 inside the Memorial Leighton HealthPlex in downtown South Bend: 12,000 square feet built by Memorial Health System to teach children in grades pre-K through 8 how their own bodies work and what healthy choices do inside them, sponsored by the Memorial Health Foundation with the Weinberg Foundation, the Memorial Hospital Auxiliary and the Junior League of South Bend. Its first-year evaluation report, filed in January 2001, describes a working museum already running school programs, which is what distinguishes HealthWorks! in this section: it was a children's museum with a curriculum, visited by classes the way the Civic Theatre's young audiences were, as a school day that happened to be play.
The model traveled. Beacon Health System, Memorial's successor, estimated in 2017 that about one million children had visited over the museum's years, and that the South Bend model had been replicated in St. Louis and in Tupelo, Mississippi: the figure is printed as Beacon's estimate, attributed, the way this section prints every number it cannot audit. A caution the research earned and the article keeps: the St. Louis and Tupelo HealthWorks! museums are the replicas, distinct institutions in distinct cities, not branches of this one, and their records are not imported here. South Bend's museum is the original, and its address for its downtown years is fixed in period guides at 111 W. Jefferson Blvd.
Sources
- HealthWorks! Kids' Museum, Year 1 of 5 evaluation report (ERIC ED452161, January 31, 2001): opened February 2000; 12,000 square feet in the Memorial Leighton HealthPlex, downtown; grades pre-K through 8; sponsors Memorial Health System and Memorial Health Foundation, Weinberg Foundation, Memorial Hospital Auxiliary, Junior League of South Bend.
- Beacon Health System (September 19, 2017): estimated one million children visited over the years; South Bend model replicated in St. Louis and Tupelo, Mississippi.
- Period visitor guides (Wikivoyage South Bend, contemporary listings): HealthWorks! Kids' Museum, 111 W. Jefferson Blvd.