Museum Of Natural History Files Building Plans For Gilder Center Expansion

UPPER WEST SIDE, NY — The American Museum of Natural History is taking steps toward the construction of the $325 million Richard Gilder Center for Science, Education, and Innovation. The museum filed construction plans with the city Department of Buildings for the expansion campus this week.

The Gilder Center expansion — designed by Jeanne Gang of the architecture firm Studio Gang — will rise six stories and eat up a quarter-acre of Theodore Roosevelt Park on Columbus Avenue between West 77th and 81st streets.

The expansion will add a total of 245,000 square feet of space to the American Museum of Natural History, according to plans filed with the Department of Buildings. A museum spokesman did not respond to Patch's inquiry about a potential construction timeline.

The museum has planned to have the Gilder Center open in 2020 for the museum's 150th anniversary celebration.

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In October, the city Landmarks Preservation Commission approved the museum's design plan for the Gilder Center expansion. The museum needed LPC approval because while the museum itself is an individual landmark it has also been bounded inside the Central Park West Historic District for more than two decades.

"It's going to be a wonderful addition to one of the best institutions in the world," LPC Chair Meenakshi Srinivasan said in October.

But many Upper West Siders disagreed. During a lengthy public approval process Upper West Side residents showed up in force to protest the planned expansion due to the negative affects of over-building on Columbus Avenue and building on public parkland in Theodore Roosevelt Park.

The debate pitted neighborhood preservationists against allies of the museum, including Community Board 7. The Community Board eventually approved the design with 37 board members approving, one against and three abstain during its Oct. 5 full board meeting.

The Gilder Center's first floor will be occupied by an "insectarium" — which will feature live insects alongside scientific exhibits on some of nature's most diverse creatures. One floor up one of the museum's most popular season exhibits, the butterfly vivarium, will find a year-round home in the Gilder Center.

But there's also good news for museum-goers who aren't fans of insects. One of the Gilder Center's main draws will be gigantic glass-walled collections core, which will feature nearly 4 million of the museum's artifacts. The new space will also contain a theater where visitors can check out the more visual aspects of certain the museum's exhibits.

Correction: This article originally stated the expansion would add 540,000 square feet of space to the museum. The Gilder Center will only add 245,000 square feet.

Photo courtesy Ralph Appelbaum Associates