Located in New York City, the world's first and foremost vertical metropolis, The Skyscraper Museum celebrates the City's rich architectural heritage and examines the historical forces and individuals that have shaped its successive skylines. Through exhibitions, programs and publications, the Museum explores tall buildings as objects of design, products of technology, sites of construction, investments in real estate, and places of work and residence. For a description of the gallery and for photos of the space, please visit our Photo Slideshows page.
The Skyscraper Museum is located in lower Manhattan's Battery Park City at 39 Battery Place. Museum hours are 12-6 PM, Wednesday-Sunday.
General admission is $5, $2.50 for students and seniors, children under 12 are free. Free for members of the military, police, fire departments, and veterans.
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here for directions to the Museum.
All galleries and facilities are wheelchair accessible.
SKYSCRAPER GALLERIES
The Skyscraper Museum's core exhibits trace the history of high-rise construction with models, videos, and infographics. Displays include a 40-foot long mural on the History of Height from the pyramids to the present, highlighting themes and buildings that relate to the evolution of the skyscraper and point the way to 21st-century supertalls. A special section devoted to the World Trade Center examines its creation as an urban renewal project in the 1960s and documents the rebuilding after 9/11. Case studies also feature the history of construction and models and graphics of the tallest skyscrapers internationally.
UPCOMING EXHIBITION
Open July, 2018 through January, 2019
SKYLINE is a ground-breaking exhibition devoted to the invention and evolution of Manhattan’s skyline, past, present, and future. The exhibition examines the emergence of the collective image of the skyline as the brand identity of New York, but also distinguishes five periods in which new buildings grow and take characteristic forms based on economic, technological, and regulatory factors.
Click here for related press coverage
UPCOMING FAMILY PROGRAMS
MODULAR ARCHITECTURE WORKSHOP
August 18, 2018
10:30-11:45 AM
Come learn about modular architecture! With this hands-on activity, kids will explore the shapes of basic modules and design modular systems to create their very own towers. Ages 5+. RSVP required.
SKYLINE LANTERNS
August 25, 2018
10:30-11:45 AM
Brighten up your home with a skyline inspired lantern! Join us while we explore our new exhibition "Skyline" and craft one of a kind paper lanterns. Children are invited to learn about the history of the skyline of New York with this hands-on activity. Ages 5+. RSVP required.
UPCOMING PROGRAMS
Tuesday, August 21, 2018 3:00 pm
Educator Open House
Educators are invited for a FREE Open House at the museum to explore ways to integrate a gallery visit and our many online resources into your classroom curriculum. Snacks and free copies of our Tower Tubes will be provided. All attendees will receive a tour waiver ($35) for future tours.
Click here for more information.
Please RSVP by calling (212) 945-6324 or emailing [email protected]
Wednesday, September 5, 2018 3:00 pm
Curator's Tour
Skyscraper Museum Director and curator Carol Willis will lead a tour of the museum's new exhibition SKYLINE.
Curators tours are free with admission. No RSVP required.
HERITAGE TRAILS NEW YORK
A New Web Project from The Skyscraper Museum
A Digital Reconstruction of Heritage Trails New York, a new interactive web project and digital archive created by The Skyscraper Museum, revives a landmark public history project focused on lower Manhattan of the mid-1990s. Heritage Trails – a series of four follow-the-dots walking tours punctuated by 40 site markers – covered the area from the Battery to the African Burial Ground and Foley Square, and from the Hudson River to South Street Seaport. The trails linked and illuminated Downtown’s deep history, from discoveries of remnants of the colonial city by urban archeologists to stories of the great skyscrapers and the creation of the canyon of Wall Street. ENTER HERITAGE TRAILS NEW YORK
The Skyscraper Museum has created a new web project that explains an emerging form in skyscraper history that has evolved in New York over the past decade: the super-slender, ultra luxury residential tower. These pencil-thin periscopes — all 50 to 90+ stories — use a development and design strategy of slenderness to pile their city-regulated maximum square feet of floor area (FAR) as high in the sky to as possible to create luxury apartments defined by spectacular views.
Click here to view NEW YORK'S SUPER-SLENDERS
TEN & TALLER, an interactive web project, explores the rise of New York's skyscrapers by surveying every building in Manhattan ten stories or taller from the first ones in 1874 through 1900. The Skyscraper Museum collected images and mapped all the 252 buildings, as well as created a timeline of dates of construction. These interactive interfaces allow viewers to see and explore the buildings in innumerable ways. The web projects were launched in conjunction with the Museum's 2016 exhibition TEN & TALLER: Manhattan 1874 - 1900 which is documented in full here.
A 3-D CBD: How the 1916 Zoning Law
Shaped Manhattan's Central Business Districts
1939-40 NYC Department of Finance tax lot photographs of the Garment District, showing the distinctive setbacks created by the 1916 zoning law. From left to right: 345-351 W. 35th Street; 347-351 W. 36th Street; 247-255 W. 38th Street.
This essay, published online on July 25, 2016, to mark the precise centennial of the passage of the New York City Zoning Resolution on July 25th, 1916, is a revised and updated version of a 1991 conference paper and subsequent chapter of a 1993 book, Planning and Zoning New York City: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow. Organized by the New York City Department of City Planning, the conference celebrated the 75th anniversary of the zoning law with a symposium on the history and future of planning in New York City. Read the final report here
Click here to read the essay
HILARY BALLON
On June 16, 2017, we lost a dear friend and extraordinary colleague,
Hilary Ballon. Please click here for a remembrance.
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The Museum is a participating member of the Downtown Culture Pass.
