By Daniel Katzive
What you see above is not a rendering. It is a current photograph of the evolving Richard Gilder Center for Science, Education, and Innovation, which will open next winter, according to Ellen V. Futter, president of the American Museum of Natural History. In making the announcement on Monday, Futter indicated the new Center will transform the experience of the entire museum.
The Gilder Center will extend from the western side of the museum complex, facing Columbus Avenue. The AMNH notes the Center will connect many of the museum’s buildings and create “a continuous campus across four city blocks as envisioned more than 150 year ago.”
According to the AMNH’s press release, the Center creates approximately 30 connections among 10 existing buildings, enhancing circulation and eliminating dead ends. The front facade facing Columbus Avenue will be clad in Milford pink granite, which is the same stone used for the museum’s main entrance on Central Park West, with the new stone culled from a quarry close to the original one, according to the AMNH.
The museum also announced details of key components of the new Center, including:
- a four-story atrium which will create a connection between the Central Park West and Columbus Avenue sides of the museum;
- a new research library and learning center, situated for easier access to the public than the existing library and with views of the Upper West Side and the Hudson River and beyond;
- space for close to 4 million scientific specimens, about 12 percent of the museum’s collection;
- a new insectarium, with an emphasis on helping visitors “explore the vital roles that insects play in different ecosystems”;
- a new, year-round “vivarium” where visitors can mingle with free-flying butterflies; and,
- an “Invisible Worlds Theater.”
As part of the project, the adjoining Theodore Roosevelt Park will also be relandscaped with additional seating and gathering areas and expanded circulation.
For more on the project, see: https://www.amnh.org/about/gilder-center
hard to navigate that site for project updates
hope its easier in real life
was hoping to learn about park space lost in evolution of bldg
Don’t worry, Zig. There’s a huge park just one block to the East. I’m sure you’ll find ample space there.
Really? Using Central Park is not the same as loss of many mature trees in TR Park adjacent to museum; now all bldgs. little greenery left.
Good grief. there are plenty of mature trees left. Plenty of greenery.I live nearby and walk by it every day.
The Gilder center took a small fraction of T Roosevelt Park.
Very true….! The space that they took was not even being used, it was already fenced in … Plus they’re adding mature adult trees and they’re adding over 12 juvenile trees and tons of shrubs and flowers etc. and I don’t care about the complainers of what left of them.
Can’t wait to walk through this new beautiful space! We are so lucky to have this amazing institution in our neighborhood.
We are very fortunate and privileged to have such a beautiful museum park right across the street from our homes as well as the adjoining parks in the area that basically caters to all our needs on bright and beautiful days here on the Upper Westside. We should all be thankful that this not turn into a overpopulated Eastside and it is NOT the Eastside, midtown or village. Thank you Mayor Lindsey!
Transform is right. That’s the end of the lovely allee on Columbus on the Museum side. Once the center opens that area, where locals have long sat and cooled themselves on hot summer days, will be given over to tourists and museum goers.
Ha! All those local people left town or past during the pandemic.
Wait — the Museum site will now be “given over to” Museum goers?
Can such things be??
Right. Locals apparently can’t be museum goers (completely mutually exclusive) and your right to sit and cool yourself in one specific, unchanging, “locals only” allee heavily outweighs any other considerations.
Ugly building. Dishonest claims. Monument to a billionaire.
Re: “Monument to a billionaire”
DRAT! Dang billionaires! Who do they think they are…giving away money to make this city more exceptional!! Off-with-their-heads!!!
UMMM…wait a moment! According to his NYT obituary (Gilder died in May, 2020), he and George Soros helped create The Central Park Conservancy (boo…who wants parks?) and was a major benefactor of both the A.M.N.H. and its neighbor, the New-York Historical Society (boo2…who needs stuff just for smart folk)?
Look at me; I’m not smart!
The story makes it sound like not everything in the museum was connected and now it will be. Every single exhibit in the museum was already connected. I have always found it easier to find things in the Museum of Natural History than I did in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, another enormous museum.
Is this out of place building sticking out like a saw thumb an April fools joke I hope.
Ahh this takes me back, reading the the comments kvetching about how the neighborhood, etc. are now all but unlivable due to the addition of a world-class educational space.
It’s like time travel back to the days when, following predictions, the addition of the Rose Center\Hayden Planetarium destroyed the neighborhood and lead to the demise of the UWS, turning it into a post-apocalyptic wasteland. That happened, right?
Looking forward to the new center and opportunities it will bring.
Thanks for the walk down memory lane.
This!
It’s amazing how people think science just stopped at some point at the limits of a then-existing structure.
Same with Columbia, NYU, as if schools built when the country was 150 million people and only white males went should not expand now that the potential student body has increased by six-fold.
Enough NIMBYism when it comes to essential institutions. Especially the one that’s next to an 840 acre park.
My favorite was the insistence that the additional building was going to add more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere to heat and cool the building than the entire country of England used in a year!
Great addition to the city. We could use the additional enthusiasm for science education that projects like this inspire. The dog walkers and parkbench sitters will still have plenty of space. I can’t wait to see the space from the inside.
We share our excitement and enthusiasm from our block here on W. 80th St. along with Ellen Futter the president of the American Museum of Natural History of the opening of the The Gilder Center next winter. It looks so majestic form the streets.
The exterior is not majestic. It is as drab looking as the rest of the museum. The cheerleading for this new building is ridiculous.
Steevie LOL‼️
As ridiculous as you are!
Everybody sees the building that looks like Melting Ice, but they fail to remember the real ice that’s melting is from the use of concrete, which is the second greatest contributor to CO2 gases in the atmosphere. Did everyone forget about the trees? Billie Jean?