About the Spellman Museum of Stamps and Postal History

The Spellman Museum is a private, secular non-profit educational institution located on the Regis College campus. It features exhibit galleries, a philatelic library, activities rooms, and a retail store stocked with stamps, collecting supplies, books, and souvenirs. Known for its dynamic exhibits and programs that bring history, current affairs, pioneers, and exotic places to life through stamps, the Spellman is one of only two philatelic museums in the United States. The other one is the Smithsonian Institution’s National Postal Museum in Washington, DC.  The art, history, culture, and stories captured here on postage stamps engage constituents of all ages and backgrounds, fostering connections that are vital to an informed and enlightened populace.

In addition to vast collections of U.S. and international stamps, the Spellman is home to philatelic exhibits on a broad range of subjects including the 1773 Boston Tea Party, the 1937 Hindenburg disaster, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and breast cancer awareness. Local residents may also enjoy displays on postal history in and around Weston, including the Boston Post Road which runs through the town.

Founded in 1961 to house the collection of Cardinal Francis Spellman

Cardinal Spellman traveled Europe extensively and loved to use stamps as souvenirs, having stamps signed to commemorate events in the church and in the world. Over his years spent in Europe, he shipped packages of stamps he collected to Sister Fidelma Conway, CSJ, his Regis College colleague, in order to keep them safe. With the size of his collection larger than could easily be housed at Regis, ground was broken for a new building on the campus on March 14, 1962 for the museum. The Cardinal Spellman Philatelic Museum officially opened in 1963, with Sister Fidelma continuing to act as caretaker for the collection.

In 1950, Cardinal Spellman wrote a sentiment by which the Museum continues to operate, “Stamps are miniature documents of human history. They are the means by which a country gives sensible expression to its hopes and needs; its beliefs and ideals.”