HTS Highlights: The Jewish Museum

Posted in Holiday Train Show on November 28 2012, by Matt Newman

As the Holiday Train Show ramps up, we’ll be highlighting the cultural landmarks of New York City that have come to inspire our many miniatures, as well as the established organizations behind each one. It’s an opportunity for our readers to not only come away with a fresh understanding of the beautiful architecture in our city, but of the important institutions that have helped to create our rich cultural landscape.

What would become the world-renowned Jewish Museum did not begin as such. C.P.H. Gilbert, a prominent New York architect of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, designed this building as a private home for the family of Felix Warburg in 1908. Gilbert’s specialty was designing grand, chateau-style houses on Fifth Avenue for wealthy New York patrons like investment bankers Warburg and Otto Kahn, and entrepreneur Frank Woolworth.

In 1944, the Warburg family donated the home to the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, which reopened it as The Jewish Museum in 1947. In the decades following, the museum has grown to contain the foremost collection of Jewish art and cultural artifacts in the United States.

Now a world-class repository of both classic and contemporary art, the museum maintains over 26,000 objects while supporting concerts, lectures, symposiums, and a broad spectrum of related educational media. After paying a visit to this iconic cultural institution, stop in at The Jewish Museum’s online shop to receive a 10% discount on your purchase with the code NYBG12!