American Museum Of Natural History Breaks Ground On Expansion

UPPER WEST SIDE, NY — After a long review process and a legal battle, the American Museum of Natural History broke ground on its new $383 million expansion Wednesday.

"We made it!" Museum President Ellen Futter said Wednesday to a crowd of museum staffers, donors, politicians and representatives from the 10 city agencies that helped shepherd the project from design to construction.

The new Richard Gilder Center for Science, Education, and Innovation will yield new classroom space, exhibition galleries and space for the museum's scientific collections while creating a new entrance to the museum and improve the flow of visitors throughout the facility, museum officials said Wednesday.

One of the key features of the new center will be dedicated learning zones for students of all ages and science teachers, museum officials said. The Gilder Center will also allow museum visitors to view working scientific collections for the first time in the museum's history at the Collection Core, which will house about four million specimens. An immersive theater

"The Gilder Center will improve our children's opportunities, our teacher's preparedness, our scientists' capacity for discover and by extension our nation's workforce preparedness and its global innovation and leadership," Futter said Wednesday.

Ramon Pimentel, a graduate of the museum's science research mentoring program, said his involvement with the museum as a child helped prepare him for college. He currently studies at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry.

"I've been living in this concrete jungle for the past 18 years of my life, but unfortunately I had never seen a forest or natural preserve due to my family's background, we couldn't afford it. And a program like this... offered me this opportunity to go for free," Pimental said Wednesday.

The Gilder Center will be located on the west side of the museum near Columbus Avenue and West 78th Street. The area has been a work zone since September, when the museum began work to prep the site for upcoming construction. The center will expand the American Museum of Natural History's footprint into Theodore Roosevelt Park by a quarter-acre, according to museum plans. The new five-story facility will add a total of 230,000 square feet of space to the American Museum of Natural History, according to plans filed with the Department of Buildings.

The Gilder Center was designed by the architecture firm Studio Gang, led by Jeanne Gang. The architect, named one of TIME's most influential people of 2019, described the center as a "dream project" and one of the "most exciting" the firm has ever worked on.

"Our design for the Gilder Center will invite visitors to explore the wonders of the Museum with its openness and smooth, flowing geometry," Gang said in a statement. "Through a network of new connections, people will be able to follow their own curiosity to discover treasures of natural history."

In April, a New York State appeals court dismissed a legal challenge filed by parks advocates and preservation groups seeking to block the expansion. The group, Community United to Protect Theodore Roosevelt Park, argued that the Parks Department incorrectly interpreted a 142-year-old law when it approved the American Museum of Natural History's plan without public review and that the department failed to take a "hard look" at potential environmental hazards caused by construction.

The lawsuit was filed in 2018, but the group's opposition to the plan goes back as far as 2016 when the museum was seeking approvals from city agencies such as the Landmarks Preservation Commission and at Community Board 7.

Museum officials are hoping to open the new Gilder Center to culminate the museum's 150th anniversary celebration, which began earlier this year.