New-York Historical Society Museum & Library expands Central Park West location

The New-York Historical Society Museum and Library, the oldest museum in New York City, is expanding its building on Central Park West by 70,000-sf, which will be used for program space for itself and The American LGBTQ+ Museum.

The Museum is the first in New York dedicated to LGBTQ+ history and culture and make its permanent home at New-York Historical. Upon completion, The American LGBTQ+ Museum will occupy the entirety of the expansion’s fourth floor and encompass two galleries, access to the roof garden, and areas for offices and storage.

The Robert A.M. Stern Architects-designed expansion will also feature classrooms, galleries, collections study areas, and a state-of-the-art compact storage facility for the institution’s renowned Patricia D. Klingenstein Library. The new storage facility for the library will replace the original storage stacks, dating from 1904 and 1937.

The new classrooms will serve the Academy for American Democracy program, an educational initiative for New York’s sixth-grade students that is transforming the way history and civics are taught in middle school. The new galleries and collections study areas, meanwhile, will host the graduate students from New-York Historical’s Master of Arts in Museum Studies program.

The first phase of the project will begin in summer 2022 and focus on the below-grade library stacks. A second phase will build the galleries, classrooms, and other spaces once target funding is achieved.

At an estimated budget of $1 billion, the Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) is considered the largest museum in the world dedicated to one civilization. The superlatives don’t end there: It’s also the largest museum in Egypt, the largest Pharaonic museum in the world, and one of the world’s leading scientific, historical, and archeological study centers.