The Skyscraper Museum

Located in New York City, the world's first and foremost vertical metropolis, The Skyscraper Museum celebrates the City's rich architectural heritage and examines the historical forces and individuals that have shaped its successive skylines. The mirror-polished stainless steel floor and ceiling create the impression of an infinitely vertical space, with reflections of vitrines appearing as soaring volumes within a skyline.

The location and spacing of these volumes varies throughout the museum to symbolize changes in zoning codes over time. Densely packed along the storefront, they embody an initial lack of regulation. Further inside, where the cases are mobile for easy reconfiguration, they mimic the “wedding cake” setbacks adopted by New York City in 1916, as well as the tower-and-plaza formula popularized in the 1950s. For the museum’s canopied entrance, artist James Turrell designed a large-scale “light box” that further invigorates the space.

Through exhibitions, programs and publications, the Museum explores tall buildings as objects of design, products of technology, sites of construction, investments in real estate, and places of work and residence. The Skyscraper Museum is located in lower Manhattan's Battery Park City at 39 Battery Place. 

General admission is $5.