Reflective ceiling, floors amplify museum space

Strolling through the streetscapes of Manhattan, New Yorkers are privy to an inspiring vista of high-rise architecture. Witness the Gothic-style Woolworth Building -- the tallest building in the world at one time -- or the 1,453-foot-tall  Empire State Building. Perhaps more than the rolling green lawns of Central Park, the hit Broadway shows, or Madison Avenue shopping, people around the world associate the city with its jagged skyline of stone and marble structures that stretch toward the heavens. Now there is a novel museum, right here in Lower Manhattan, dedicated to celebrating that unique architectural legacy.

The Skyscraper Museum -- the first new museum to open in downtown New York since 9/11 -- officially welcomed the public into its galleries on April 2. The private, not-for-profit, educational corporation offers exhibitions, programs, and publications from its location at 39 Battery Place, right near the skyscrapers and concrete canyons of lower Broadway and Wall Street.

Visitors enter the museum and walk up a narrow ramp -- bracketed on both sides by sheets of tempered glass and steel handrails -- into a well-lit space dotted by a series of brightly lit vitrines. Because the actual size of the museum is rather small, only about 5,800 square feet, architect Roger Duffy employed an imaginative optical trick to amplify the area.

The interior of the museum, both the floor and ceiling, is sheathed in stainless steel, polished to a mirror-like finish. The reflections created in the space produce the illusion of an expansive, multi-story area. When visitors look down at their feet, for instance, the reflections from the floor and ceiling make the vitrines -- in reality, only about 11 feet tall -- look like skyscrapers themselves, vertical towers infinitely spiraling downwards.

"It was such a small space," says Duffy, an architect with the firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, which provided its services pro bono. "It had limited height. So we decided on this idea of amplification."

Visitors study exhibits on museum's opening day

There is an album, for instance, of black-and-white photographs capturing the creation of the Empire State Building. Shots chronicling the construction show an army of workers laboring on the emerging tower, setting columns into place, hoisting a carved limestone eagle up to the fifth floor.

As guests move through the exhibit, there is also memorabilia detailing the future of high-rise architecture, such as undersized models of the proposed Freedom Tower -- which will be the tallest office building in the world -- and details of skyscrapers in other countries, like elaborate drawings of the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and the Shanghai World Financial Center.

Founded in 1996, the Skyscraper Museum -- the only museum in the world dedicated solely to skyscrapers and skylines -- relocated its headquarters several times before finding this permanent home at the southern tip of Battery Park City. The developer Millennium Partners and the Battery Park City Authority donated the space. The facility occupies the ground floor in a mixed-use project that includes the Ritz-Carlton Hotel and a 38-story condominium tower.

"A permanent home in Lower Manhattan was the dream from the start," Carol Willis, the founder and director of the museum, explained in a statement. "Downtown is the birthplace of the skyscraper and a living archive of the evolution of the high-rise form with buildings that span more than a century. It is now the focus of worldwide attention as a place of both memory and renewal." 

Many of the parties involved in establishing the museum worked pro bono. In addition to Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, Tishman Construction Corporation -- serving as construction manager on the project -- also donated its services.

Besides the exhibitions, the Skyscraper Museum also presents publications, programs, and lectures, as well as the "Downtown New York Web Walk" -- a feature on the museum's award-winning website, www.skyscraper.org, which offers four interactive virtual walking tours through Lower Manhattan.

The Skyscraper Museum is open from Wednesday through Sunday, noon to 6 p.m. Admission is $5; $2.50 for students and seniors.

Photographs, ©2004 Grant Peterson