National Museum of Play - Rochester, NY
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sagefemme
N 43° 09.142 W 077° 36.122
18T E 288432 N 4781021
National Museum of Play in Rochester NY, 1 Manhattan Square Drive, Rochester, NY 14607 houses the National Toy Hall of Fame
Waymark Code: WMDRXX
Location: New York, United States
Date Posted: 02/20/2012
Views: 5
The Museum of Play started in 1969 with the personal collection of Rochester, NY native Margaret Woodbury Strong, the museum opened to the public in 1982. Since then it has refined and increased its collections (hundreds of thousands of items), and expanded twice, in 1997 and 2006.
The newest expansion is also fitting for a place designed for children. There were three parts to the expansion. The Caterpiller is a deconstructionist style three-story building that, in fact, looks somewhat like a caterpiller from almost every angle. The Dancing Wing Butterfly Garden is a butterfly house, that, in fact, looks like a butterfly. Finally, Field of Play is a small "structure resembles a giant pile of colorful children’s blocks and houses an exhibit on the importance of play. The ‘blocks’ are the result of approximately 40 tons of structural steel, custom cut and bolted together at odd angles to support the building’s unusual geometry, then covered with a ’skin’ of bright red, green, blue, yellow, purple, or orange. The sloping, angular construction suggests movement, as if the blocks could be taken apart; and, since the structure has no visible exterior doors or windows, its scale leaves more to the imagination. The building’s brilliant colors are made from five-foot-square panels of a special ’skin-like,’ resin-based cladding material manufactured in Europe and rarely seen in the U.S. This material acts like a skin that ‘breathes’ and has the ability to take on exceptionally rich, intense colors that form a dramatic contrast to the concrete building adjacent to it." (
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