Opening Date Unveiled For Natural History Museum's $431M New Hall

UPPER WEST SIDE, NY — A nearly decade-old plan to build a new hall at the American Museum of Natural History is nearing the finish line.

The American Museum of Natural History unveiled that the Richard Gilder Center for Science, Education, and Innovation will finish in the winter 2022-2023.

The announcement Monday puts the end in sight for long-standing construction outside the world-famous Upper West Side museum.

For roughly eight years, anyone living or frequently walking near West 79th Street and Columbus Ave. or within Theodore Roosevelt Park has been met with the construction and sidewalk sheds for the planned new hall.

The 230,000 square-foot Gilder Center, costing an eye-catching $431 million, will seek to greatly advance "public science education for all ages at a time when the role of science in addressing society's most pressing issues is urgent."

The new center will also connect many of the museum's buildings, creating a type of continuous campus across four UWS blocks that was originally envisioned 150 years ago.

In announcing the scheduled opening for the first time, President Ellen Futter also unveiled new details of major components of the Richard Gilder Center for Science, Education, and Innovation.

• "The Kenneth C. Griffin Exploration Atrium, a soaring, four-story-high civic space that serves as a gateway into the Gilder Center, flowing through the Museum to create a connection from Central Park West to Columbus Avenue, and opening onto Theodore Roosevelt Park
• The Gottesman Research Library and Learning Center, a dynamic hub that connects visitors with the Museum Library’s many unparalleled resources and helps patrons navigate flows of information, both print and digital
• The Louis V. Gerstner, Jr. Collections Core, three stories of visible research and collections spaces providing glimpses into the Museum’s collections of millions of scientific specimens and displays offering insight into the evidence and process of scientific discovery in various types of collections, from fossils to insects, with the first and second floors supported by the Macaulay Family Foundation
• The 5,000-square-foot Susan and Peter J. Solomon Family Insectarium, the first Museum gallery in more than 50 years dedicated to the most diverse – and a critically important – group of animals on Earth
• The new year-round, 3,000-square-foot Davis Family Butterfly Vivarium, a permanent exhibition where visitors can mingle with free-flying butterflies, a group that are one of nature’s vital environmental barometers
• The extraordinary 360-degree Invisible Worlds Theater, an innovative melding of science and art that will give visitors a breathtakingly beautiful and imaginative yet scientifically rigorous immersion into the networks of life at all scales."

“As New York City, our country, and the world continue to recover from the pandemic with science leading the way, there has never been a more urgent time to share our Museum’s mission of scientific research and education,” Futter said in a news release.

The Gilder Center project will also include improvements to the adjacent Theodore Roosevelt Park.

Key new features will include a bigger park entrance, an enlarged Margaret Mead Green with more public access, new expanded park gathering places, improved pedestrian circulation, added plants, infrastructure improvements, and an increase in the number of trees and benches.