The Skyscraper Museum is an architecture museum located in

Battery Park City Battery Park City is a mainly residential planned community and neighborhood on the west side of the southern tip of the island of Manhattan in New York City. It is bounded by the Hudson River on the west, the Hudson River shoreline on the north ...

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

and founded in 1996. As the name suggests, the museum focuses on high-rise buildings as "products of technology, objects of design, sites of construction, investments in real estate, and places of work and residence." The Skyscraper Museum also celebrates the architectural heritage of New York and the forces and people who created New York's skyline. Before moving to the current and permanent location in Battery Park City in 2004, the museum was a nomadic institution, holding pop-up exhibitions in four temporary donated spaces around Lower Manhattan since 1996. The Skyscraper Museum was founded and is directed by Carol Willis, a professor of architectural history and urban studies at

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

. It includes two exhibition spaces for both permanent and temporary exhibitions, a bookstore, and a

mezzanine A mezzanine (; or in Italian, a ''mezzanino'') is an intermediate floor in a building which is partly open to the double-height ceilinged floor below, or which does not extend over the whole floorspace of the building, a loft with non-sloped ...

with its office, situated above the bookstore. The museum can be reached by a ramp starting in the basement.

Move after September 11, 2001

The original site of the museum was located very close to the World Trade Center. After the

September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commer ...

, the museum was forced to close temporarily as its space was commandeered as an emergency information center. In March 2004, the museum reopened in its new permanent home at 39 Battery Park Place in the neighborhood of

at the southern tip of

. It was the first museum to open in

Lower Manhattan Lower Manhattan (also known as Downtown Manhattan or Downtown New York) is the southernmost part of Manhattan, the central borough for business, culture, and government in New York City, which is the most populated city in the United States with ...

after the September 11 attacks. The museum occupies an area of on the ground-floor of a mixed-use building, that was donated by the developer. The new site was designed by

Roger Duffy Roger Duffy is an American architect, known for rigorous and unconventional approach to design. Now retired, he worked as a partner at the firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. He was a design partner in the New York office from 1995 until 2018, an ...

Skidmore, Owings & Merrill Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) is an American architectural, urban planning and engineering firm. It was founded in 1936 by Louis Skidmore and Nathaniel A. Owings, Nathaniel Owings in Chicago, Illinois. In 1939, they were joined by engineer Jo ...

, working

pro bono ( en, 'for the public good'), usually shortened to , is a Latin phrase for professional work undertaken voluntarily and without payment. In the United States, the term typically refers to provision of legal services by legal professionals for pe ...

. The architect tried to amplify the indoor height of the museum, which is . This was arranged by using polished covers of stainless steel on the floors and ceilings, giving the illusion of an infinite vertical space.

Selected exhibitions

On September 6, 2006, the museum opened an exhibit on the

construction of the World Trade Center The construction of the first World Trade Center complex in New York City was conceived as an urban renewal project to help revitalize Lower Manhattan spearheaded by David Rockefeller. The project was developed by the Port Authority of N ...

and the complex's subsequent history. The exhibit includes the original architectural/engineering model of the World Trade Center. On June 24, 2009, the museum opened China Prophecy: Shanghai, a multi-media exhibition that examines

Shanghai Shanghai (; , , Standard Chinese, Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ) is one of the four Direct-administered municipalities of China, direct-administered municipalities of the China, People's Republic of China (PRC). The city is located on the ...

's evolving identity as a skyscraper metropolis. Featuring models of the major iconic structures, including Jin Mao,

Tomorrow Square Tomorrow Square () is the eighth-tallest building in Shanghai, China. It is located in Huangpu District, Puxi, close to People's Square. It is about 285 m (934 ft) tall and has 63 floors. This multi-purpose building contains a 342-r ...

Shanghai World Financial Center The Shanghai World Financial Center (SWFC; , Shanghainese: ''Zånhae Guejieu Cinyon Tsonsin'') is a supertall skyscraper located in the Pudong district of Shanghai. It was designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox and developed by the Mori Building Compan ...

, and the new super-tall

Shanghai Tower Shanghai Tower () is a 128-story, megatall skyscraper in Lujiazui, Pudong, Shanghai.

, as well as computer animations, film, drawings, and historic and contemporary photography of the city, the exhibition combines an in-depth look at the new generation of towers with an overview of the sweeping transformation of the city’s traditional low-rise landscape into a city of towers. In 2011, the Skyscraper Museum opened a new exhibit called "Supertall!" dedicated to the tallest buildings in the world, those that stand at least , the height of the

Empire State Building The Empire State Building is a 102-story Art Deco skyscraper in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. The building was designed by Shreve, Lamb & Harmon and built from 1930 to 1931. Its name is derived from " Empire State", the nickname of the ...

. The exhibit features qualifying buildings built since 2001 to those that will be built by 2016 as a commemoration of and to demonstrate the irony of the recent popularity of the skyscraper in many countries, despite sentiment that after the September 11 attacks there would be no more desire to live or work in or to build skyscrapers. Besides in-house exhibitions, the museum also sponsors external shows and programs at various locations in the city. Additionally, the museum offers a unique virtual gallery through its website, which is an advanced 3-D archive of Manhattan

skyscrapers A skyscraper is a tall continuously habitable building having multiple floors. Modern sources currently define skyscrapers as being at least or in height, though there is no universally accepted definition. Skyscrapers are very tall high-ri ...

References

External links

Official website

Photos from the Shanghai exhibition opening
{{Authority control Skyscrapers Architecture museums in the United States Museums in Manhattan Museums established in 1997 Skidmore, Owings & Merrill buildings Battery Park City 1997 establishments in New York City

Move after September 11, 2001

Selected exhibitions

See also

Further reading

References

External links