Museum of New York City History Unveils Its Future
In 2003, one could be forgiven for questioning what the future held for the Museum of the City of New York. It had lost its promised new home in the Tweed Courthouse downtown, had given up on a proposed merger with the New-York Historical Society and was adjusting to a new director, Susan Henshaw Jones.
Now, five years later, the museum is cutting the ribbon on Wednesday on the first completed phase of a building project intended to give the institution, on Fifth Avenue between 103rd and 104th Streets, more space and greater visibility. It is also a symbol of its renewal.
“The transformation of the museum has been both physical and mission-driven,” Ms. Jones said in an interview. “The structural renovation supports our goals.”
Those goals include becoming a more attention-getting destination, on a par with city museums around the world. This is no small challenge.
“We’ve always been the poor sister to the city museums in London, Rome, Paris and Tokyo,” said James S. Polshek, the lead architect of the project. Under the Giuliani administration, Mr. Polshek said, the museum was particularly neglected and came to be pigeonholed as a place “where little kids go to look at fire engines.”
To counter that image and reinvigorate the museum’s presence at its 76-year-old home, Mr. Polshek’s firm, Polshek Partnership, has designed a 3,000-square-foot glass-clad pavilion gallery in a former vacant lot behind the museum. The new two-level gallery has translucent surfaces that diffuse sunlight to protect the artifacts on display. The entrance vestibule and rotunda of the museum have been updated with a connection to the new gallery that leads through the two-story, semicircular wall and cradles the existing grand stairway.
“We used architecture to create a public announcement of the state of the institution,” Mr. Polshek said in an interview. “We wanted to give a signal that this was an alive and modern museum, capable of catering to the next generation of visitors in New York City.”
Even as the architects introduced the contemporary addition, they also restored Joseph H. Freedlander’s original 1932 Georgian Revival building, which was designated a city landmark in 1967. The front facade has been restored; its 4,700-square-foot front terrace facing Fifth Avenue has been redesigned and relandscaped. In the back of the building, the existing terrace on the south side of the pavilion has been expanded and a new terrace added on its north side. “This marries a mid-20th-century building in a historic style to a contemporary piece of architecture that represents the 21st century,” Mr. Polshek said.
His firm’s three-level addition includes one story below ground, the museum’s new curatorial center. This new space features cold rooms for the preservation of some 500,000 photographic images of New York City, as well as for glass and acetate negatives and prints.
“We did not have proper storage at all for our collections,” said James G. Dinan, the museum’s chairman.
The museum’s theater collections will now be housed in movable storage cabinets; a specialized conservation area is reserved for the care of the costume collection. Other additions include a research room for visiting scholars, a vault for the museum’s silver collection and a room for the handling of artifacts, a common requirement for temporary exhibitions.
The museum will now also have full disability access for the first time.
The new pavilion gallery will be used for temporary exhibitions. The first, scheduled to open on Oct. 3, is “Paris/New York Design, Fashion, Culture 1925-1940.” The gallery will be named the James G. Dinan and Elizabeth R. Miller Gallery, in recognition of those donors’ gift of more than $5 million. (They declined to give the exact amount.)
“The goal, really, is to create a wow factor, a must-see factor, so the museum becomes one of the mandatory stops,” said Mr. Dinan, the founder and chief executive of York Capital Management.
About $20 million of the $28 million construction cost for the first phase of the refurbishment plan was covered by the city, which owns the building. The additional $8 million was raised from private sources.
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Now, five years later, the museum is cutting the ribbon on Wednesday on the first completed phase of a building project intended to give the institution, on Fifth Avenue between 103rd and 104th Streets, more space and greater visibility. It is also a symbol of its renewal.
“The transformation of the museum has been both physical and mission-driven,” Ms. Jones said in an interview. “The structural renovation supports our goals.”
Those goals include becoming a more attention-getting destination, on a par with city museums around the world. This is no small challenge.
“We’ve always been the poor sister to the city museums in London, Rome, Paris and Tokyo,” said James S. Polshek, the lead architect of the project. Under the Giuliani administration, Mr. Polshek said, the museum was particularly neglected and came to be pigeonholed as a place “where little kids go to look at fire engines.”
To counter that image and reinvigorate the museum’s presence at its 76-year-old home, Mr. Polshek’s firm, Polshek Partnership, has designed a 3,000-square-foot glass-clad pavilion gallery in a former vacant lot behind the museum. The new two-level gallery has translucent surfaces that diffuse sunlight to protect the artifacts on display. The entrance vestibule and rotunda of the museum have been updated with a connection to the new gallery that leads through the two-story, semicircular wall and cradles the existing grand stairway.
“We used architecture to create a public announcement of the state of the institution,” Mr. Polshek said in an interview. “We wanted to give a signal that this was an alive and modern museum, capable of catering to the next generation of visitors in New York City.”
Even as the architects introduced the contemporary addition, they also restored Joseph H. Freedlander’s original 1932 Georgian Revival building, which was designated a city landmark in 1967. The front facade has been restored; its 4,700-square-foot front terrace facing Fifth Avenue has been redesigned and relandscaped. In the back of the building, the existing terrace on the south side of the pavilion has been expanded and a new terrace added on its north side. “This marries a mid-20th-century building in a historic style to a contemporary piece of architecture that represents the 21st century,” Mr. Polshek said.
His firm’s three-level addition includes one story below ground, the museum’s new curatorial center. This new space features cold rooms for the preservation of some 500,000 photographic images of New York City, as well as for glass and acetate negatives and prints.
“We did not have proper storage at all for our collections,” said James G. Dinan, the museum’s chairman.
The museum’s theater collections will now be housed in movable storage cabinets; a specialized conservation area is reserved for the care of the costume collection. Other additions include a research room for visiting scholars, a vault for the museum’s silver collection and a room for the handling of artifacts, a common requirement for temporary exhibitions.
The museum will now also have full disability access for the first time.
The new pavilion gallery will be used for temporary exhibitions. The first, scheduled to open on Oct. 3, is “Paris/New York Design, Fashion, Culture 1925-1940.” The gallery will be named the James G. Dinan and Elizabeth R. Miller Gallery, in recognition of those donors’ gift of more than $5 million. (They declined to give the exact amount.)
“The goal, really, is to create a wow factor, a must-see factor, so the museum becomes one of the mandatory stops,” said Mr. Dinan, the founder and chief executive of York Capital Management.
About $20 million of the $28 million construction cost for the first phase of the refurbishment plan was covered by the city, which owns the building. The additional $8 million was raised from private sources.