Museum of the City of New York

The Museum of the City of New York was founded in 1923 by Henry Collins Brown to preserve and display the history of New York City. The first museum in the country to have a designated curatorial department for toys, it exhibits these antique toys, costumes, decorative objects, and furniture. It also features dioramas of the city’s historical and physical environments.

The museum is home to some very rare and unique items, like a number of Eugene O’Neill’s handwritten manuscripts, a room full of Duncan Phyfe furniture, a suit worn by a man to George Washington’s Inaugural Ball, and the Carrie Walter Stettheimer dollhouse, containing miniature works by Alexander, Archipenko, George Bellows, Gaston Lachaise, Marcel Duchamp, and Marguerite Zorach.

Come discover the origins of this magnificent city, and experience it like never before through a look into its structural, financial, and cultural history.

Your tickets give you direct access to the museum. Once inside, feel free to explore at your own pace. Take a journey through the last four centuries in the Big Apple by watching Timescapes, a 28-minute award-winning documentary showcasing the growth of New York City, with showtimes every 40 minutes from 10:20 AM - 5 PM.

There are four floors chock-full of recordings, films, art, posters, artifacts, and other objects, along with interactive exhibitions. Also see the stories of influencers like Jay Z and Donna Karan, and learn about the boroughs of the city. With photographs and dioramas on display, see how the city expanded and grew to become the city with the most skyscrapers in the country.

Must-see

• Graffiti art by Martin Wong
• Chair belonging to Sarah Rapelje, the first child born in New York State of European parentage
• Coney Island photographs from the 1960s
• A multimedia show outlining New York City's history and growth
• New York City activist exhibits

Current exhibitions

• Mod New York (until April 1, 2018)
• Art in the Open: Fifty Years of Public Art in New York (until May 13, 2018)
• Beyond Suffrage: A Century of New York Women in Politics (until July 22, 2018)
• New York Silver
• Activist New York
• New York at its Core