M.Hill Role: Associate-in-Charge while w/Gwathmey Siegel & Associates Architects.
The Jewish Children’s Museum is the first of its kind in the world. It is located in Crown Heights, Brooklyn on Eastern Parkway along Brooklyn’s Museum Row. The 50,000 square foot Iconic building was commissioned by Tzivos Hashem, an international not-for-profit children’s organization. The museum acts as both a repository for cultural narratives and artifacts and an urban community center designed to nourish an understanding of Jewish culture and history through collective, hands-on instruction and interaction.
The Jewish Children’s Museum is a unique institution for children and their parents from all segments of the community to explore their history and heritage in a stimulating, interactive environment. It also provides the non-Jewish world with a forum for understanding the Jewish community and its contributions to history and culture.
Visitors approaching the building are greeted by a two-story mural of a smiling child’s face and giant dreidel (a traditional Jewish child’s toy) The lobby and information area on the ground floor, which also includes a cafeteria and museum shop are organized around a circular staircase which is the central element connecting the buildings four public floors. The stairway begins on the lower level, the location of the Interactive Computer Arcade, synagogue, library, theater, arts and crafts center and classrooms. This community center can be entered separately via a direct staircase with a “wavy” ceiling from the street level.
In the 12,000 square foot galleries occupying the third and fourth floors, visitors encounter an array of exhibits and displays covering Jewish history and heroes, holidays and customs, the Holocaust and contemporary Jewish life. On the second level, a flexible 2,700 sf area is designed to function as a gallery, concert hall and banquet room. The top two floors of the Museum hold administrative offices, a conference room and support services.
