Staten Island Children’s Museum

Edification value 3/5
Entertainment value 4/5
Should you go? 3/5
Time spent 108 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned Staten Island Children's Museum

I didn’t spend much time there, but I loved Block Harbor, which combines a nautical theme with tons of blocks of all sizes and materials.

It’s taking me ages to review my last few museums. They’re mostly the children’s museums and scheduling visits with my friends with kids has proven tricky. So I was insanely pleased when I talked a good friend into taking her two kids to Staten Island with me on a gray Sunday afternoon.

The Staten Island Children’s Museum is a denizen of Snug Harbor, the former retirement home for old sailors that today serves as the borough’s convenient one-stop shop for cultural institutions, housing among other things:

Staten Island Children's Museum

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Staten Island Museum

Edification value  3/5
Entertainment value  3/5
Should you go?  3/5
Time spent 94 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned I had completely forgotten about New York’s state fossil, until the Staten Island Museum reminded me.  It’s a sea scorpion or eurypterid, which I would absolutely not want to meet on a Jurassic beach.

Staten Island Museum
The State Fossil!

The Staten Island Museum started as a private pooling of personal natural history collections in 1881, opening to the public in 1908.  Currently it claims to be New York’s only truly encyclopedic museum, embracing science, history, and art.  And so it does, albeit in small doses of each.

The museum formerly resided in a classical building in St. George, near the Staten Island Ferry, until last year, when it moved to Snug Harbor.  It’s a bus or car ride from the ferry terminal, but at least the architecture is still appropriately museum-y.

Staten Island Museum

The Snug Harbor Cultural Center is Staten Island’s Mall of Enlightenment.  A Chinese Scholar’s Garden, a Children’s Museum, the fantastic Noble Maritime Collection, the hit-or-miss Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art, and the Staten Island Museum all reside within its more-or-less renovated, beautiful, Greek revival grounds and buildings. Continue reading “Staten Island Museum”