Understanding the design concepts behind these 4 famous NYC museums

Delve into the architectural details of New York City’s most iconic museums, where history and art converge

Known for its vibrant art scene and being a city filled with personality, New York City is certainly a concrete jungle where dreams are made. Home to Broadway and the iconic Statue of Liberty, a symbol of the American Dream, this bright city is also home to many iconic art museums that have stood the test of time.

Built over the last century, we take a deep dive into understanding what makes these four museums a testament to their era that still manages to impress architects and visitors alike, even in the modern world.

1. The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Above Front entrance of the Met (Photo: Flickr / Lucas Ferretti)

Starting out as a Victorian Gothic building with its iconic mansard roof and granite details that evoke the feeling of stepping into a fairy tale, the Metropolitan Museum of Art has come a long way, undergoing various expansions over the decades to become the wonder it is today.

Now sitting at around 2 million square feet of space and five blocks long, the original red brick facade designed by architect Calvert Vaux is still present at the front entrance. Due to its current size, crowds naturally disperse themselves throughout the museum, with blind windows installed at the top galleries to protect displayed art from being destroyed by natural light.

Photo 1 of 2 Inside the Met (Photo: Wikicommons / Sracer357)

Photo 2 of 2 Picture of the original Met building (Photo: Wikicommons / Herbert Mitchell)

2. Museum of Modern Art

Above The current front entrance of MoMA (Photo: Wikicommons / ajay_suresh)

Founded by Lillie P. Bliss, Mary Quinn Sullivan & Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) was first erected in 1939 between residential brownstones and townhouses. Designed in the Bauhaus style by Philip Goodwin and Edward Durrell Stone, MoMA is a poster child of modernist architecture with its ribbon windows, cantilevered roof, and expansive glass panels covering almost the entire building.

Located in mid-town Manhattan between Fifth and Sixth Avenue, MoMA has expanded over the years to take up a majority of the previously residential block. Each MoMA block connects seamlessly with the next, creating one cohesive experience that is hard to finish within a single day.

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Above Open courtyard within MoMA (Photo: Wikicommons / Alsandro)

3. The Guggenheim

Above Front entrance of Wright's famous Guggenheim (Photo: Wikicommons / Gunnar Klack)

Located on Fifth Avenue, the Guggenheim remains in a residential area of the neighbourhood. Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright as a “monument for art”, the Guggenheim features a continuous loop that creates a linear experience for its art viewers no matter where they start. This particular idea is based on a sketch by Le Corbusier for an endlessly growing museum based on the golden ratio.

Despite its limitations in displaying larger pieces of art with its canted walls and structural piers, the Guggenheim is a work of art in itself, its main gallery wrapping around a central atrium skylight that provides natural light from above.

Above The atrium is the Guggenheim's centrepoint that provides the museum with natural light (Photo: Wikicommons / T meltzer)

Above Art on display in the Guggenheim (Photo: Unsplash / Werner Du plessis)

4. The Breuer Building

Above Front entrance of the Breuer Building (Photo: Wikicommons / Ajay Suresh)

Having gone by many names, the original Breuer Building was designed in 1966 by Bauhaus-trained architect Marcel Breuer. Following the features of typical Bauhaus architecture, the Breuer Building uses plenty of sumptuous materials to provide a textural experience. The structure of the museum is composed primarily of jet mist granite, its misty white veining softening the harsh exterior while providing a solid structure to the museum’s inverted ziggurat pattern on the outside.

Having only seven windows, Breuer plays with angles to transform them into their own picture frames of the museum’s exterior. Plenty of open, loft-like spaces with concrete gridded ceilings help to maximise the gallery’s flexibility, which is made to display large modern pieces.

Photo 1 of 2 Interior of the Breuer Building (Photo: Wikicommons / Jim.henderson)

Photo 2 of 2 Angled windows frame the outside environment like its own work of art (Photo: Wikicommons / DanielPenfield)

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Topics

New York City Art Museums Historical Buildings Historical Architecture

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