REPURPOSING ATTRACTIONS
SECOND LIFE
When a visitor attraction closes, it might be the end of an era but it’s not necessarily the end of the story. Rhianon Howells looks at four very different sites that are all experiencing a new lease of life under fresh management
PLEASE TOUCH MUSEUM
W
OLD ATTRACTION MIXED-USE EXHIBITION, PERFORMANCE AND RECREATION SPACE NEW ATTRACTION PLEASE TOUCH MUSEUM AT MEMORIAL HALL, OPENED OCTOBER 2008
hen the Please Touch Museum opened in 2008 at Memorial Hall, Philadelphia, it signalled
the coming together of one of the US city’s best-loved family attractions with one of its best-loved landmarks. Memorial Hall in Fairmount Park was
built for the Centennial Exhibition (World’s Fair) of 1876. After serving as an art gallery during the fair, the building became the fi rst Philadelphia Museum of Art, remain- ing open for small exhibitions when that museum moved in 1928. In the 1950s, part of the building was turned into a recreation centre, although it was also used for orches- tral performances and other events. But by the year 2000, the dete-
rioration of the building led the Fairmount Park Commission to seek a new tenant to restore it. For Please Touch Museum – a success- ful, non-profi t children’s attraction opened in 1976 – it was a perfect opportunity to develop and expand.
“We were much too crowded at our previ- ous location,” says president and CEO Laura Foster. “Memorial Hall gave us the space we needed, we were able to have parking here, the building is absolutely beautiful and we loved the setting.” The fact the 156,000sq ft (15,000sq
m) site had started life as a museum was another draw. “We were returning a national historic landmark to its original use [and] it was very exciting to be able to talk about it in that way to prospective funders,” says Foster. Please Touch invested $76m (£49.2m,
59.8m) to renovate the building and cre- ate new exhibits, as only a few items were moved. “The building wasn’t in fabulous
60
“We’ve returned a national historic land- mark to its original use”
The museum is aimed at young families and takes a play-based approach to learning
shape and we had to fi gure out how to lay out the exhibits and manage our visitor fl ow,” says Foster. “But it wasn’t a diffi cult building to work with; there are great ceil- ing heights here which is wonderful for some of our exhibits as well as for our musical and theatrical programming.” The most signifi cant addition was a large annex to house the museum’s historic carousel. Aimed at young families (most visi-
tors come with a child aged two to fi ve), Please Touch takes a play-based approach to teaching and learning. One exhibit is themed around transportation, with a real bus and a play garage; there’s a super-
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market and shoe store; a medical centre; an Alice in Wonderland exhibition, and a large water-play area. Parents and children love it, says Foster,
but the new site is also attracting a whole new market: “A lot of adults want to see the building and learn about the Centennial, so we’re now offering ‘grown-up’ tours too.” For both old attraction and new tenant,
the project has been an unquestion- able success. In 2009, the Please Touch Museum attracted 687,000 visitors, com- pared with 180,000 a year at its previous site. Memorial Hall, meanwhile, has been given back its raison d’etre.
AM 2 2010 ©cybertrek 2010
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