Things To Do in Elizabeth

The history of Liberty Hall Museum stretches back more than 200 years. The original 14-room Georgian home was built in 1772 and served as the home of New Jersey's first elected governor. As the years passed, Liberty Hall became the home of governors, senators, entrepreneurs, and congressmen as it slowly expanded into a 50-room mansion. Presidents George Washington, Ulysses S. Grant, Herbert Hoover, and Gerald Ford all stayed here. Collections of antique furniture, toys, tools, and ceramics from several generations fill the rooms.

Today, Liberty Hall Museum gives visitors an inside look at what life was like during America's early days, when the Founding Fathers were drafting the Constitution and Betsy Ross was sewing the Statue of Liberty’s gown. Inside the home, you’ll see historical fashions and furnishings; outside, ancient trees shade a carefully maintained English-style parterre garden. The onsite firehouse, added in 2005, serves as an educational center, where youngsters can don firefighter gear and play on a fully restored antique fire truck.

Gamers Baseball Academy busts summer’s monopoly on the game, giving athletes an indoor, year-round destination where they can learn the ins and outs of both baseball and softball from a crack staff of college coaches, professional athletes, and college players. The 10,000-square-foot facility nurtures players with its collection of hitting and pitching tunnels, batting cages, defense areas, and a changing room for molting mascots.

Gamers Baseball Academy can adapt to meet the training needs of each individual boy and girl or an entire squad. Athletes can then put their newfound skills to work on the academy’s own baseball and softball teams to recreate the live games’ speeds and intricacies no matter the month.

The phosphorescent indoor landscape at Monster Mini Golf immerses putters in an eerie universe that inverts the sun-soaked cheer of conventional courses. Rimmed in glowing barriers, 18 holes lure swingers of all sizes to challenge their coordination and resolve in the face of winged monsters, scowling animated trees, a creepy clown, and their opponents' shockingly dazzling smiles. Sheltered from searing rain and howling wind, the indoor course enables play around hazards such as a spell well and luminous, ghostly windmill at any time of the year. An in-house radio station and DJ mask the sound of pounding hearts with lively beats and course commentary, and golfers looking for additional glory can win prizes by participating in regular contests or at the on-site arcade.

Offshore Sailing exposes participants to founders Steve and Doris Colgate’s years of water-navigating, knot-tying experience. The couple actively participates in several national boards and committees and competes in numerous races. This year marks the school’s 47th year in business. Budding sailors will participate in a two-hour lesson with up to three other students, ensuring individual attention and personal dolphin-speak translations from knowledgeable instructors on a sleek, award-winning Colgate 26 sailboat. The lesson will provide novice seafarers with the basic skills to sail with confidence, just like it has for more than 115,000 other graduates.

Lissette Brandao has a wealth of national and international experience, including spending her college career at Rutgers, playing semi-professionally in the US, and playing internationally for the Portuguese Women's National Team. But she doesn't keep everything she's learned to herself. Instead, she teaches youngsters and high-schoolers the world's game, from basics to advanced, through team training, camps, and private lessons. To ensure she delivers the highest possible quality to the youth she teaches, she has certifications from organizations such as the National Soccer Coaches Association of America and the US Soccer Federation.

For more than 100 years, The Newark Museum has enraptured attendees with exhibitions celebrating artistry and science in a facility that currently encompasses 80 galleries. Curious minds delight in national and international artwork, several enthralling science collections, a planetarium boasting a Zeiss ZKP3 star projector, and an enchanting sculpture garden. The new ongoing exhibit Generation Fit: Steps to a Healthier Lifestyle makes use of interactive media and games, such as animated explanations of appetite circuits, video games combined with exercise challenges, and Pilates sessions led by presidentially pardoned turkeys. Partakers can peruse ornaments fashioned between the early 1700s and today at The Glitter & The Gold: Jewelry From the Newark Museum before voyaging into a plethora of permanent galleries. Patron memberships bestow customers with bountiful yearlong benefits, including numerous free admission passes for friends, four planetarium tickets, discounts for shop and café purchase, and reciprocal admission to more than 150 art museums in the country.