Photograph Courtesy of The Magic House
At The Magic House, where workers scurry to install sinks and plant boxwoods, executive director Beth Fitzgerald dons a hard hat before providing a sneak peek at the new building. After 11 years, the storied children’s museum—ranked by Zagat as the No. 1 children’s attraction in the country in 2005—is completing a $13.5 million expansion that more than doubles the museum’s original size to 50,000 square feet. The grand opening is December 19.
The expanded site stresses literacy, civic education and outdoor activities while teaching kids about possible career paths—from poets to presidents.
Through the Front Door
Beckoning first is the Play Garden, replete with a mosaic hopscotch board, a yellow brick path and a maze. Step inside The Magic House’s front door, and you see a towering climbing tree inside a circular stairway, as well as the 2,500-square-foot “Once Upon a Time Gallery,” complete with a book-shaped entrance. Used for traveling exhibits, this space alone is more than twice the size of The Magic
House, pre-expansion.
In the wide corridor outside the gallery stands the Poet Tree. Leaf-shaped sheafs of paper beckon to young poets to write and pin up their creations. Musical instruments, including a sitar and a 23-foot xylophone (it plays “Ode to Joy” when you roll a ball down it), grace the Grand Hall. At the end of the main level is an area where parents can pick up preordered picnic baskets and enjoy lunch.
Oh Say Can You See?
When planning the addition, The Magic House sought advice from a committee of local education experts. “They pointed out that because of the No Child Left Behind Act, civic education probably isn’t getting the same kind of attention it did in the past,” Fitzgerald says. “You have history, art and science museums—but there is really nothing that helps you understand your role as a citizen.”
Now there is. The Magic House’s government center includes a mock Oval Office set up for pretend press conferences, a legislative area where kids can see how a law is enacted and a courtroom where youngsters enact mock trials.
The plethora of professions continues inside a new 1,800-square-foot mock construction site, where kids can paint walls and run a crane with a softball wrecking ball. On the mezzanine, children pretend to be Sherlock Holmes solving an art-fraud mystery. And the Sunshine Classroom—an outdoor garden on the roof—introduces tykes to plant science with exhibits and huge planters where little hands can dig.
In the Cellar
Twenty-four feet below ground, The Magic House is making its own magic. It now has a workshop that’s off-limit to the public for creating its own traveling exhibits, with the first based on Mary Engelbreit’s Mother Goose. “One of the things we wanted to do was to add new sources of income to support the cost of the new facility,” Fitzgerald says. But the expanded Magic House has much loftier goals. She adds, “We wanted it to be the best in the world and really unique.”
