Skyscraper Museum

Interior of the Skyscraper Museum

Founded in 1997, the Skyscraper Museum, located in New York City in the United States, is currently the only museum of its kind in the world. As the name suggests, the museum focuses on high-rise buildings as “objects of design, products of technology, sites of construction, investments in real estate, and places of work and residence.”

The original site of the museum was located very close to the World Trade Center. After the September 11, 2001 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 in the neighborhood of Battery Park City at the southern tip of Manhattan. The new site, designed by Roger Duffy, of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. The museum features stainess steel floors and exhibition areas meant to give the feeling of standing 40 stories in the air over a Manhattan street.

Original architectural model of the World Trade Center on exhibit at the Skyscraper Museum

On September 6, 2006, the museum opened an exhibit on the construction and history of the World Trade Center. The exhibit includes the original architectural/engineering model of the World Trade Center.

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.

Carol Willis, a professor of urban studies and planning at Columbia University and architectural historian, is the founding director of the Skyscraper Museum.