[NEWS] The New York Historical Society Announces $140 Million Expansion


July 6, 2021 


Renderings of the proposed New York Historical Society expansion COURTESY OF THE NEW YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY 




On July 1st, Louise Mirrer, President and CEO of the New York Historical Society (NYHS), announced that the Society will begin a $140 million expansion of its historic building on Central Park West. The 70,000 additional square feet will house the new American LGBTQ+ Museum.

 

The new space will showcase much of the artifacts the NYHS acquired as early as 1937, but hadn’t had the opportunity to display, despite the collection’s steady growth. A plan by the NYHS to develop that land into condos met fierce resistance in 2007, the New York Times reported at the time. There hadn’t been plans to expand until 2019, when the Board members of the American LGBTQ+ Museum, a startup with no home, reached out to the NYHS about working together. 




© The American LGBTQ+ Museum 


Suddenly we’ve reached this moment, a tipping point where more and more people are saying, ‘We better record this history, integrate it and celebrate it before we lose it,’” Burns said.

 

In 2018 the nascent board of directors began raising money and settled on a museum charter in 2019.

 

The institution, which aims to tell the “untold stories of regular lived lives, activists’ lives, lives lost in queer New York and queer America,” will complement the downtown Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, the only dedicated LGBTQ+ art museum in New York.





The new museum will be focusing on highlighting the diversity of the LGBTQ+ community. Photo:nyhistory.org 


The expansion will be helmed by Robert A.M. Stern Architects and move the museums into a 10,000-square-foot lot that Historical Society trustees purchased in 1937. The expansion is planned as a “phased project,” with the first beginning in summer 2022. Museum officials hope to have the work done by 2024.


 

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