A House for Verticality

Yesterday the Skyscraper Museum opened the doors of its new home at 39 Battery Place in New York City. According to the private, non-profit, educational corporation's web page, the Skyscraper Museum,

"The 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."

Exhibitions have included the Viewing Wall at Ground Zero, WTC: Monument, Big Buildings, and Building the Empire State, among others. The first two seem to indicate the importance of its permanent home in the Ritz-Carlton Downtown by the Polshek Partnership, situated at the tip of Battery Park City a few blocks from the World Trade Center site. Designed by SOM, the Skyscraper Museum contains two main galleries, one for the main exhibition of New York's high-rise history and another for temporary exhibits.

Interior View of Skyscraper Museum
Interior by SOM

The Skyscraper Museum's Founding Director is Carol Willis, author of the great book Form Follows Finance, a history of high-rise construction in Chicago and New York.