Statue of Liberty Museum Opens

NEW YORK CITY—After breaking ground in October 2016 and topping out in December 2017, the new Museum of the Statue of Liberty at 1 Liberty Island recently opened to the public. The museum is jointly operated by the Statue of Liberty Ellis Island Foundation and the National Park Service. It’s just steps away from the iconic national monument.

FXCollaborative and DeSimone Consulting Engineers were the architects and engineers behind the recently unveiled 26,000-square-foot building, which now provides 15,000 square feet of new exhibition space. Construction costs for the new cultural facility were approximately $70 million.

Previously, the museum was within the base of the monument and accessibility was limited due to safety regulations. An estimated 4.4 million visitors from around the world are anticipated to come to the museum each year.

The museum was constructed with sustainability as a key factor and is expected to achieve LEED Gold certification. Its features include a green roof, planted with native grasses to serve as a natural habitat for birds. The design accounts for its environment, suggesting a lifted extension of the surrounding park to minimize disruption to its surroundings.

The project’s location on an island required delivering building materials to the site by barge. This created certain complexities with the time-consuming shipping of concrete which had to go through security and travel to the site. The largest single-day pour measured 400 cubic yards, which required 18 concrete trucks on the barge at the same time.

“This was a remarkably complex and engaging project,” says Stephen DeSimone, president and CEO of DeSimone Consulting Engineers. “The experience and skill of our engineering team enabled us to address numerous design and construction challenges to create a dynamic new facility for this iconic national landmark.”

Admission is included with the fare for a ferry ticket to Liberty Island.