Brooklyn Children’s Museum

In 1999 the Brooklyn Children’s Museum (BCM) celebrated its centennial. One hundred years earlier it opened as the first museum in the world designed specifically for children. Internationally, its creation spurred development of children’s museums around the world. At a local level, it has always played a central role in the Crown Heights neighborhood, which has long valued the resources offered by the museum and the importance of having a world-class institution in its midst.

The Brooklyn Children’s Museum was originally housed in two 19th century mansions, an Italianate villa built for the L.C. Smith family and the William Newton Adams residence. Once part of an elaborate complex of grand homes and gardens known as Bedford Park, these properties were eventually sold to the city, which in turn offered them to the Brooklyn Institute of Arts of Sciences to create the world’s first children’s museum. Anna Billings Gallup, a botanist and zoologist, was BCM’s first curator-in-chief, serving for 35 years (1902-1937). The focus developed during her time at the museum was on teaching children about a wide variety of subjects–from art, to natural science, to world cultures–using museum-quality collections in an interactive manner.

From the start, the museum attracted a large audience from both the surrounding community and the city at large. Over the years, with this heavy use, the two mansions began to deteriorate. In 1968 and 1969, plagued by declining maintenance and fires, the museum vacated both buildings and they were demolished.

Controversy and frustration surrounded the building of the new museum to replace the mansions. Since 1900, at least four sets of plans had been proposed for a new building, yet none had been implemented. Even before the mansions were torn down, the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, BCM’s parent institution, had planned to move the museum from its current location to an area adjacent to the Brooklyn Museum, nearer the Institute’s other facilities–the Brooklyn Academy of Music and the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.

At the time of the demolition, there were still plans to move the museum out of the neighborhood, based at least partially on the view that its location was inaccessible and possibly unsafe for visitors. Over the years, Crown Heights had evolved from a wealthy, largely white community to a diverse neighborhood with fewer resources and a large African American population.

The community organized and actively protested the move, claiming that BCM was the only cultural asset in their impoverished neighborhood and that it helped to educate their children and keep them out of trouble. They argued that if BCM moved to a more prosperous neighborhood, then the burden of travel would be placed on the children who could least afford it. After circulating petitions and holding formal protests, their efforts were eventually successful and plans were made for a new museum to be built where the mansions once stood.

The cost for the new structure was $3.5 million dollars. It was a modern, domed building with underground facilities concealed from the street, intended to appear as an extension of the surrounding Brower Park. The entrance was an antique subway kiosk connected to an interior tubular ramp and four levels of outdoor and indoor exhibition space. Groundbreaking for the new museum was held on June 13, 1972 and the structure was completed in December 1974. However, the new building did not officially open until 1977 due to economic obstacles associated with the city’s fiscal crisis. In the meantime, BCM operated a lively offshoot called the “MUSE,” New York City’s first community museum–a neighborhood facility on the site of a former automobile showroom and pool hall at 1530 Bedford Avenue in Bedford-Stuyvesant.

Operating in its new home from 1977 to the present, the museum has continued its mission of encouraging children to be curious, and to experiment and explore the world around them through culture, the arts, science and the environment. While still a national and international model for its approach to child-based learning through objects and exploration, BCM is now particularly known for its innovative community-focused programs and exhibitions. These include the Museum Team, an award winning, adolescent after-school program that involves 800 youth from the surrounding neighborhood who participate in free, educational activities, including peer tutoring, paid internships and college preparation; and exhibitions such as “Face to Face–Dealing with Prejudice and Discrimination.”

As of 2004, BCM is again in the midst of a major $39 million expansion and redesign of its facilities to accommodate its growing programs. The museum will nearly double in size, allowing staff to display many more of the museum’s 27,000 cultural and natural history objects. With the expansion, BCM expects to serve 400,000 visitors annually, rather than its current 250,000. BCM’s renovations will also make it the first “green” (environmentally-advanced) children’s museum–equipped with geothermal heat pumps, recycled and renewable materials, and roof top solar panels.