Clark established cultural institutions in his home town of Cooperstown. He founded the Baseball Hall of Fame and paid for construction of its building, which opened in 1939. He offered his late brother Edward's country estate to the New York State Historical Association, which moved its headquarters to Cooperstown in 1939. The estate's mansion houses the Fenimore Art Museum, whose collection of American paintings and folk art Clark greatly expanded in the 1940s and 1950s. He founded the Farmers' Museum in 1942, which features a large collection of farm tools and equipment housed in Edward's former dairy barn. Its attractions include a village of relocated 19th-century buildings staffed by interpreters in vintage costume, including a blacksmith's forge and a working carousel. The museums are across New York State Route 80 from each other, on land once owned by James Fenimore Cooper.