In honor of Partners in Preservation and in appreciation of public support and votes, the Museum will host an Open House Weekend on Saturday, May 5 and Sunday, May 6 with free ice cream*, exhibition tours, family programs, as well as a Metro Card holder giveaway to the first 100 guests to vote for the Museum. Visithelpmcny.com to place your vote for the Museum of the City of New York.

All exhibitions will be open to the public. Tour the blockbuster exhibition The Greatest Grid: The Master Plan of Manhattan, 1811-2011, the newly opened Activist New York, and Stories the City Tells Itself: The Video Art and Photography of Neil Goldberg, which Time Out New York says “confirms the Museum as a destination for serious contemporary art.”

Free Docent Tours will be held on Saturday at 12pm, 2pm and 4pm, and Sunday at 2pm and 4pm.

Activities for Open House Weekend include:

Planning Urban Places and Spaces Family Workshops

May 5th at 10am

New York City is full of people with places to go. Cars, buses and bicycles fill our streets, pedestrians pound the pavement on sidewalks, and subways rumble underground. How can all these different forms of transportation share the same space? This workshop will introduce participants to some of the ways that urban planners organize transportation in the city. Recommended for kids aged 8 to 12.

May 5th at noon

Become an urban planner by learning about concepts such as the relationship between public and private space, land use, and zoning. This program will introduce participants to the tools and processes used by urban planners to organize neighborhoods and culminates in an opportunity to create an original model of a city block that applies the principles of urban design. Recommended for ages 8 to 12.

The Greatest Grid

May 6th at 10am and noon beginning in the exhibition

Explore the exhibition The Greatest Grid: The Master Plan of Manhattan to learn how the city’s street grid has evolved over the past 200 years and then work with an educator to make plan how streets and buildings will look in the future. Recommended for ages 6 to 12.

Reservations for all programs are required. Call             917-492-3395       or visithttps://boxoffice.mcny.org/public/default.asp?cgCode=2&cgName=Family%20Programs

The Museum would use the Partners in Preservation grant to restore the Fifth avenue façade of its landmark Georgian Revival building, which features an elegant wrought-iron entrance gate and two life-size bronze sculptures of Alexander Hamilton and DeWitt Clinton. These features have remained entirely untouched since they were first installed in 1932.

*Ice cream with admission (While supplies last).

The Museum of the City of New York is located at 1220 Fifth Avenue (between 103 and 104 streets), New York, NY.