Monday, July 25, 2011
Art Lower East Side's Tenement Museum Gets Glassy Expansion
Posted by Benjamin Sutton on Mon, Jul 25, 2011 at 2:51 PM
The New Museum and Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art aren't the only institutions looking to transform the Lower East Side into an ultra-modern museum district: the Tenement Museum is expanding across the street from its longtime home on the southeast corner of Delancey and Orchard streets, but abandoning its trademark historicism for something much more modern.
Late last week Bowery Boogie noticed that after years of being boarded up, the ground floor of 103 Orchard Street was once again visible (albeit unrecognizable from its former brick self), the sidewalk in front of it finally uncovered and walkable.
The new space will serve as the Tenement Museum's new visitor center and provide expanded gift shop, a second floor education center, demo kitchen and orientation theater for tourists befuddled by the area's paucity of conveniently numbered streets, while the main exhibits like the preserved historic rooms will remain across Orchard Street in the museum's main building. The gift shop will be moving across the street within the next few weeks.
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