New Staten Island Museum breaks ground

The Staten Island Museum broke ground today on the new $25 million facility it’s planning to build in a vacant, Greek Revival landmark on the Snug Harbor Cultural Center campus, the New York Times reported. The 130-year-old museum has been fighting to preserve the Snug Habor buildings since the 1960s, said Elizabeth Egbert the museum’s present and CEO. The 18,000-square-foot, Gluckman Mayner Architects-designed project in Snug Harbor’s Building A “is the fulfillment of a dream 40 years in the making,” Egbert said. Funded with $24 million from the Department of Cultural Affairs, the New York City Council and the Office of the Staten Island Borough President, the facility will contain a lobby with a full-sized Mastodon replica, a Hall of Natural Sciences and Hudson River School painting collection on the first floor, and the museum’s permanent collection on the second floor. Gluckman Mayner is also the firm behind the Dia Center for the Arts and the Whitney Museum of American Art. [NYT]