Skyscraper Museum

The Skyscraper Museum is an architecture museum located in Battery Park City, Manhattan, New York City 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. It includes two exhibition spaces for both permanent and temporary exhibitions, a bookstore, and a mezzanine with its office, situated above the bookstore. The museum can be reached by a ramp starting in the basement.

The original site of the museum was located very close to the World Trade Center. After the September 11 attacks, 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 neighbourhood of Battery Park City at the southern tip of Manhattan. It was the first museum to open in Lower Manhattan after the September 11 attacks. The museum occupies an area of 5,800-square-foot (540 m²) on the ground-floor of a mixed-use building, that was donated by the developer. The new site was designed by Roger Duffy of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, working pro bono. The architect tried to amplify the indoor height of the museum, which is 10-foot (3.0 m). This was arranged by using polished covers of stainless steel on the floors and ceilings, giving the illusion of an infinite vertical space.

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