Museum of Jewish Heritage
36 Battery Place | also 18 1st Place | Battery Park City | built 1997
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The city photographed every building for its tax records around 1940 and again in the 1980s. NYC Municipal Archives.
Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.
- 1985
Governor Cuomo proposes a Battery Park City home for the Holocaust museum
In April 1985 Governor Mario Cuomo announced a plan to put a Holocaust museum and memorial inside a planned residential tower at Battery Park City, as an alternative to the old Federal Custom House, which many preservationists thought was an inappropriate home. A nonprofit would build the 34-story residential building, with what would have been profits used to cover the museum's operating costs. The city's Holocaust commission, which had won a political fight the year before for use of the Custom House, said it was excited.
Source: The New York Times
- 1994
A new 99-year lease on a smaller parcel lets construction of the Battery Park City museum begin
In August 1994 supporters announced that building would begin that fall, after a new 99-year lease with the Battery Park City Authority replaced one signed in 1986 and covered a much smaller parcel. The Authority's financing was to cover half of the expected $15 million cost. Earlier plans had failed largely because the museum relied on real estate supporters hurt by the 1980s downturn. The design was a gray granite hexagon whose six points stood for the six million Jews killed in the Holocaust.
Source: jta.org
- 1997
The Museum of Jewish Heritage opens in Battery Park City
The museum opened on September 15, 1997, with a mission to teach about Jewish life before, during and after the Holocaust. Architect Kevin Roche of Roche-Dinkeloo designed its six-sided building with a pyramid-shaped roof, meant to recall the six million Jews killed in the Holocaust. It has since welcomed more than two million visitors.
Source: Wikipedia
- 2000
The museum breaks ground on a $60 million wing that will more than triple its exhibition space
The museum held a groundbreaking on October 26, 2000 for a $60 million wing. It was to include a memorial garden, a cafe, classrooms, a theater and a Family History Center with survivor testimony gathered by Steven Spielberg's Shoah Foundation, and was scheduled to finish in 2003. The New York Times noted that the museum, in its hexagonal building with a tiered roof, expected its 100,000th student visitor on December 21.
Source: Internet Archive
- 2003
Andy Goldsworthy's living memorial garden opens beside the museum
The artist Andy Goldsworthy created a permanent memorial garden for the museum, which opened on September 17, 2003. The same year the museum added the Robert M. Morgenthau Wing, with offices, a theater, classrooms and more exhibition space. The collection now holds more than 30,000 objects.
Source: Wikipedia
- 2003
The museum opens the Robert M. Morgenthau Wing
The Museum of Jewish Heritage adds a new wing named for Robert M. Morgenthau, the longtime Manhattan district attorney who chaired the board of the commission that founded the museum. The addition brings an auditorium, classrooms, a conference center, and a temporary exhibition gallery to the six-sided Battery Park City building designed by Kevin Roche.
Source: Wikipedia
- 2017
Elie Wiesel's son speaks at a reading of Night while protesters gather in Battery Park
At a reading of Night, Elie Wiesel's account of the camps, at the museum on January 29, 2017, his son Elisha Wiesel said that the marchers protesting the new immigration order across the street in Battery Park were part of his father's legacy. He recalled that his father, after liberation from Buchenwald, came to the United States in 1955 and was stateless until he became a citizen. He closed the evening by reading his father's Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech from 1986.
Source: Internet Archive
- 2020
The museum previews Rendering Witness, an exhibition of art made by people who lived through the Holocaust
On January 15, 2020 the museum previewed Rendering Witness: Holocaust-Era Art as Testimony for the press, ahead of a run from January 16 to July 5. Curator Michael Morris said 21 of more than 380 drawings made during or just after the Holocaust were selected, including two by Helga Weissova, who was 12 when she was deported to Terezin, and works by Peter Loewenstein, who was deported from Terezin to Auschwitz in 1944 and killed.
Source: jewishlink.news
- 2021
A Confederate flag is found tied to the museum's front
On the morning of Friday, January 8, 2021, police said a Confederate flag was found tied to the front of the museum, two days after the riot at the U.S. Capitol. An aggravated harassment complaint was filed, with no arrests made. Mayor Bill de Blasio called the flag a symbol of hate and promised consequences, and museum president Jack Kliger said such hate had arrived at the museum's doorstep.
Source: abcnews.go.com
- 2022
The museum unveils a redesigned core exhibition
The Museum of Jewish Heritage reopens its permanent exhibition with a new layout built around interactive holographic recordings of Holocaust survivors, letting visitors ask questions that trigger recorded responses. The redesign replaces the museum's original 1997 exhibition installed when the building first opened.
Source: Wikipedia
Further reading
- Museum of Jewish HeritageWikipedia
- Museum of Jewish HeritagePlace Matters
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