After two years of planning the museum opened this week

The Sports Museum of America at 26 Broadway opened this week after two years of planning and construction. Its goal is to represent athletes from all walks of life, from the Olympics to bowling to basketball to soccer and beyond and from the big cities to the nation’s rural areas. The Museum is also distinctive in that it’s very interactive giving visitors an experience they won’t find at other sports museums in the US. Founder Phillip Schwab came up with the concept for the Museum when he was visited the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts and concluded there was no sports museum that covered all sports in any urban center in the US.

LowerManhattan.info got a sneak peak of the facility two weeks before the opening, amid a flurry of last minute construction. The entrance is at the corner of Broadway and Beaver. “It’s a remarkable space. There’s no building like this that has this presence on the Canyon of Heroes. Lower Manhattan has an iconic feel to it.,” said Samee Ahuja, Co Founder and COO. “Sports is such a popular part of culture and having it in NY made a lot of sense. We’re right across from Bowling Green Park which was the first athletic park in the history of the US. We’ve partnered with 60 museums across the country and they’ve made donations.” The lobby of the museum houses the retail store where in Ahujar’s words, “We’ll have everything from t shirts to basketballs to baseball bats and lots of items wit the Sports Museum logo on it. The store offers products across all sports and a lot of it ties in to what the visitor will see upstairs”.

We move up to the 2^nd floor with its dramatic 20 foot high windows. This is the museum’s events space, which can hold up to 500 people. Famous Sports artist Leroy Nieman created a 154 foot long sports mural in his classic style and it stretches the entire length of the room.

Also on the 2^nd floor is the Dreaming Big Gallery. “It’s all about famous athletes as children aspiring to greatness,” said Sam Gordon, Manager of Venue Design. “We have film of Lance Armstrong on one of his first bikes. We have Wayne

Gretzky skating on a pond bragging about how when he was 5, he was the best player in the world. We also have film of Tiger Woods, saying at age 3, that he wants a 1 iron and 2 iron for Christmas.”

The Heisman Trophy will be permanently displayed-Getty Images

Another unique aspect of the Sports Museum is that it’s the home of the Billie Jean King International Women Sports Center and Women’s Hall of Fame. ‘It’s the first ever Women Sports Hall of Fame. They’ve been inducting people for a number of years and now they have a place to honor these great athletes. The hall also focuses on the four key things that make a great athlete - community, coach, team and family. We tell stories about how each of these helped lift an athlete to a higher plane.” The interactive part of the Center allows visitors to get on a rowing machine and test themselves against star athlete’s records.

The next stop is the Olympic Gallery, with its colorful Olympic rings on the ceiling. This Gallery pays tribute to the great American Olympians over the last 112 years dating back to the first Olympics in 1896 and that includes Jesse Owens and Jackie Joyner Kersey. “One of the best artifacts we have is the American flag that Jim Craig skated around with after his win. He donated it to us,” said Gordon. For visitors who want to be interactive, you have a chance to handle a shot put and a javelin to get a sense of the athletic achievement in throwing it 40 feet.

The Baseball Hall follows. The highlight is ‘the ultimate ball park.” Gordon said, “We took iconic features from all the ball parks around the country such as the Shea apple, the green monster, the Yankee façade, the Wrigley scoreboard and ivy and we brought it all into one super ball park.” All the great stars of the game are in this hall and kids will be thrilled to say that they’ve touched the bats of three baseball icons - Ken Griffey junior, Alex Rodriguez and Ichiro Suzuki.

After that, we step into the world of NASCAR. The Sports Museum has the actual car that Jimmy Johnson was driving when he won the Nextel cup in 2006. It’s not on the floor though; it’s set up on the wall, as if it’s cruising on the side of the track. “People can also touch it and it puts people in the mind set of an athlete,” said Gordon. The NASCAR room also has two 15 foot walls of video of a race that rumbles and roars and makes visitors feel as if they’re on the track with cars whizzing by them.

Next on our tour was the Hockey Room. Step inside and you feel as if you’re on the rink! The floor is ‘glice’, a faux ice surface made of special polyurethane. Hockey fans can become a goalie for a few minutes; the interactive in this exhibit put visitors behind the net into the mask of a goalie with virtual shots coming at them at 110 mph. “It puts you somewhere you can never get through TV or attending a game”, said Gordon.

In the Basketball Room, the exhibit focuses on 12 points around the US where basketball is a key sport. Starting in Springfield Massachusetts, where the game was born, the “Round Ball Round Trip” takes museum goers to Boston, New York, Indiana, Chicago and LA, giving sports fans a full sense of the game, from the college court to the women’s league to rural and urban aspects of the game.

In the next exhibit, you walk right inside a giant soccer ball. “The Soccer Gallery is geared toward kids,” said Gordon. “Inside the huge soccer ball is a penalty kick game they can play. We also have a film about soccer and what this very popular sport means to the world.”

Walking into the Golf Gallery makes you feel as if you’re in a country club with its dark wood floors and walls. Here the focus is on the evolution of golf and how the game has changed.  A video displays Jim Nance, CBS golf announcer, breaking down the greatest drives and shots over the last 50 years. You can also touch clubs and balls that Arnold Palmer used.

Our next stop is the Tennis Gallery. “It’s all about the US open - the spectacle, the fashion, the celebs. We have a film of ‘great moments’ on tennis. We also have all three tennis surfaces on our floor so people can touch them to give them insight into the game,” said Gordon.

Entering the Football Room, you walk through the ‘tunnel’- the tube leading from the locker room to the field, which in this case is an astro turf floor. “We wanted our visitors to feel like it’s ‘the American weekend’. First, we ‘create’ Friday night, when football is all about high school football and you play for your community which is so important to many small towns around the US as in the movie “Friday Nightlights”. Then it’s Saturday and its college football and all about playing for your school. We focus on several rivalries to tell the story of college football. We pipe in the fight songs from each team to give people a feel of the rivalry. Then the exhibit focuses on Sunday and the pros, like Jerry Rice, Lawrence Taylor and Jim Brown who changed the game forever.”

The interactive in this exhibit has football lovers acting like a referee. Did he have possession? Was his toe over the line? You have 30 seconds to make the call.

Nearing the end of the tour, we walked through several exhibits which tell the story of sports and its impact on our culture. “We spotlight the stories that transcend sports. How sports brought us out of rough times. How sports can affect social change.  And stories about the globalization of sports as well as athletes who overcame adversity to excel in their field,” said Gordon.

Many interesting sports memorabilia will be on display

Next is the Fan Culture room. “It’s about all the things fans do to celebrate their sport such as face painting, baseball cards, bobble heads, cheese heads, movies, music and all the wacky things and serious things that fans do,” said Ahujar. For those who always wanted to be ‘on the air’, the Culture room has a broadcast karaoke booth where you get to record yourself making a sports call and playing it back.

Wrapping up our tour, we got a preview of ‘the ballpark of the future.’ Ahujar said, “It’s being built in Fremont for the Oakland Athletics and it’ll have spectacular cutting edge technology. For example, you’re sitting on the first baseline but you’d like to see what the game looks like from the third baseline. You can actually see that on a screen on the computer at your seat or you can get footage of the game beamed to your PDA or your phone.”  Amazing!

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