Queens Museum

Address: New York City Building
Flushing Meadows Corona Park
Queens, NY 11368

Phone:  718 592 9700

Working hours: 

Mon-Tue Closed

Wed-Sun 11 am-5 pm

queensmuseum.org

Building History

The Queens Museum – New York City Building

The New York World’s Fair 1939-1940

The New York City Building was built to house the New York City Pavilion at the 1939 World’s Fair, where it featured displays about municipal agencies. The building was centrally located, being directly adjacent to the great icons of the Fair, the Trylon and Perisphere, and it was one of the few buildings created for the Fair that were intended to be permanent. It is now the only surviving building from the 1939 Fair. After the World’s Fair, the building became a recreation center for the newly created Flushing Meadows Corona Park. The north side of the building, housed a roller rink and the south side, an ice rink.

The building’s architect, Aymar Embury III, was one of Robert Moses’ favorite designers and his other work includes the Central Park Zoo and the Triborough Bridge. He designed the building in a modern classical style, which was perhaps a little ironic given that the theme of the 1939 Fair was the “World of Tomorrow.” The exterior of the building featured colonnades behind which were vast expanses of glass brick punctuated by limestone pilasters trimmed in dark polished granite. The solid corner blocks were also constructed from limestone.

United Nations

One of the proudest periods in the history of the New York City Building was from 1946 to 1950 when it housed the General Assembly of the newly formed United Nations. Until the site of the UN’s current home in Manhattan became available, Flushing Meadows Corona Park was being considered as the organization’s future permanent headquarters site. During the early post-war years, almost every world leader spent time in the New York City Building and many important decisions, including the partition of Palestine and the creation of UNICEF, were made here.

The presence of the United Nations General Assembly in the building required substantial interior renovation and the addition of a sizable annex on the north side of the building housing the delegates’ dining room, the public cafeteria and an exhibition hall. In the interior, the skating and roller rinks were covered and, in the space now occupied by the Queens Museum’s sky-lit galleries, the General Assembly was laid out. Offices, meeting rooms, translation, press, radio and television facilities, and other services were located through the rest of the building. When the United Nations left, the addition was removed and the New York City Building again became a recreation site for the Park and the skating and roller rinks were restored to the old use.

The New York World’s Fair 1964-1965

In preparation for the 1964 World’s Fair, the New York City Building was again renovated. Under the architect Daniel Chait, a scalloped entry awning was added to the east façade with  concrete brise-soleil used to screen all of the areas of glass brick. The building once again housed the New York City Pavilion and the most dramatic display there was the Panorama of the City of New York. Built by Robert Moses for the 1964 Fair, in part as a celebration of the City’s municipal infrastructure, this 9,335 square foot architectural model includes every single building in all five boroughs. The Panorama remains in the building and open to the public as part of the Museum’s collection.

As in 1939, the New York City Building was at the center of the 1964 World’s Fair. It was (and still is) adjacent to the 140 foot high, 900,000 lb. steel Unisphere—that great symbol of the Fair’s theme of “Peace through Understanding.” After the Fair the Panorama remained open to the public and the south side of the building returned to being an ice rink.

In 1972, the north side of the New York City Building was handed to the Queens Museum (or as it was then known, the Queens Center for Art and Culture). Almost twenty years after it opened, the Museum undertook its first major renovation. In 1994, Rafael Viñoly significantly redesigned the existing exhibition spaces and the Panorama’s gallery.  Adding a ramp with glass landing platforms, visitors could now experience the Panorama in it’s open air.

The south side of the Museum remained an ice skating rink until 2008, when the Museum was closed for an even larger renovation. It was expanded and redesigned by Grimshaw Architects in collaboration with Ammann & Whitney, who created the open and soaring design you now can see today. In 2013, the Museum reopened with more than double the amount of exhibition space, as well as new entrances, an atrium, and a massive skylight.

Queens Museum Today

In November 2013, the Queens Museum ushered in a new phase in the institution’s history, completing an expansion project that gives New York a spectacular new art venue, and provides the Museum with the space necessary to better serve its diverse communities.  Since the Museum’s founding in 1972, there had been an underlying goal of occupying the entirety of the New York City Building, and now, with the design insight of Grimshaw Architects, the new Queens Museum has realized that ambition, doubling in size to 105,000 square feet, and been transformed into a nexus where the art world and real world can engage in open, meaningful dialogue.

In conceiving of the design for the new space, the Museum’s aspirations were clear: a building that embodies the overarching philosophy of openness, integrating with Flushing Meadows Corona Park on the east and appearing vibrant and inviting from the Grand Central Parkway on the west.  The interior should provide room for the display and care of growing permanent collections, spacious galleries for temporary exhibitions, and flexible and welcoming educational and public programming spaces to serve the Museum’s myriad communities.

With daylight streaming into the new Museum through a series of skylights, and with soaring 48 foot ceilings, the entire space rings with an airiness that fits in well with its setting in a park.  A suite of six galleries, ranging from 800 to 2,400 square feet, allows for concurrent exhibitions of different scales and flexible curatorial choices. The galleries ring a large central sunken living room where experiences and ideas are shared, playing a role similar to that of a town square.  Hanging above is a stunning light reflecting lantern composed of glass ribs that appear to float beneath a large skylight.  Not only a visual focal point, this crucial piece allows visitors in the sunken living room directly underneath a glimpse of the sky above while managing the trajectory of natural light entering the space.  The surrounding galleries are further shaded from this natural light by a series of strategically aligned louvers acting as a ceiling.  Galleries house a varied temporary exhibition program, as well as two long-term installations – highlights and changing exhibitions from the Neustadt Collection of Tiffany Glass, and From Watersheds to Faucets: The Marvel of the NYC Water Supply System, a partnership with the NYC Department of Environmental Protection.

The Museum’s signature Panorama now enjoys a picture window entrance from the new atrium, and the new Shelley and Donald Rubin Gallery offers a space for collections to be exhibited, revealing not only the works of art, but the collector’s bent.  Rounding out the first floor are a new Museum shop and café, adjacent to the Museum’s new front porch, and extended outdoor area with twelve crape myrtle trees and outdoor seating for museum-goers and park users alike, leading to a large lawn for passive recreation and outdoor programming.

A fluid glass staircase that responds to the existing geometry of the building invites visitors to the second floor where gathering spaces overlooking both the park and galleries lead to the Museum’s new World’s Fair Visible Storage and Gallery, education workshop spaces, the Museum’s theater, Community Partnership Gallery and flexible event and gathering spaces.  Also on the second floor are the administrative offices.

A new ceremonial entry, visible from the adjacent Grand Central Parkway, beckons visitors to the site and serves as a gateway to the entire park beyond.  This new west façade is marked by a sculptural metal entry canopy and a series of glass panels spanning the length of the building.  This 220’ x 27’ glass façade, backlit by programmable LED lighting, serves not only as a beacon for the Museum, but also as a dynamic new canvas for commissioned works of art in the future.

A final piece of the puzzle is the Museum’s new artist studio wing.  Occupying the northern side of the Museum’s first floor, nine artists’ studios ranging in size from 350 to 700 sq. ft. are home base for the recently initiated Queens Museum Open A.I.R. Program (Artists in Residence).

Today, the new Queens Museum is the marriage of form and function, where an expansive open light-filled space houses ambitious exhibitions, forward-thinking educational initiatives, and community-minded programming that engages myriad constituencies, be they local residents, international tourists, school children, artists, individuals with special needs, families, seniors, recent immigrants, and longtime New Yorkers.