Streetlife Museum

The Museum of Transport and Commerce at Hull has a long history. It began in around 1925 as one of the city’s museums. It moved to a new building in 2002 with the name Streetlife. The museum focuses on the evolution of transport alongside a reconstruction of a shopping street as it was in the 1940s. The street includes a bicycle shop, a relocated pharmacy opened in 1841 and a Co-Operative grocers’ shop. The transport galleries are arranged by mode: bicycles, horse-drawn vehicles, cars and railways. They show items from across Britain and Europe. Among the key exhibits are an 1818 Hobby Horse bicycle, a Panhard et Levassor wagonette car of 1898 and a Gardner-Serpollet steam car of 1901. The rail collections include a horse-drawn tram of 1871, a steam tram, a complete railway signal-box and a reconstructed railway goods shed. There is also a display about Joseph Rank, who came from Hull and founded one of Britain’s most successful flour-milling and bakery companies.