Hudson_River_Museum

Hudson River Museum

The Hudson River Museum, located in Trevor Park in Yonkers, New York, is the largest museum in Westchester County. The Yonkers Museum, founded in 1919 at City Hall, became the Hudson River Museum in 1948. While often seen as an art museum due to the extensive collection of works from the Hudson River school, the museum also features exhibits on the history, science and heritage of the region.

History

The museum was founded in 1919 as the Yonkers Museum and contained a number of mineral specimens housed in Yonkers City Hall and was known also as the Yonkers Museum of Science and the Arts, prior to being named the Hudson River Museum. The museum used its namesake, the Hudson River, as the core of its 75th anniversary celebration in 1994. Also central to its history is the Glenview Mansion, a National Register site built in 1877, once the home of one John Bond Trevor, and the home of the museum for 45 years from 1929 now forms a large part of the Hudson River Museum. It contains six period rooms displaying furniture and decor from that era.

The museum is the home of the Andrus Planetarium, the only public planetarium in Westchester County. The museum first added a planetarium in 1969 to celebrate the beginning of the Space Age and the increasing interest in space and that was just one part of the museum's expansion throughout the 1960s which included the construction of expanded and more modern facilities to house its collections. The planetarium and its laser shows are credited with driving the museum's 30% increase in attendance in the early 1990s due to the appeal of the shows to all ages.

The museum's diversity is part of what led to its citation as one of the most unusual cultural facilities by the New York State Council on the Arts in 1972. It has sought to maintain this diversity and relevance amidst changes in leadership and focus throughout its history. The diversity is also apparent in the museum's 23 acre site, on which a 2006 expansion attempted to better join the Glenview Mansion with the modern 1969 additions.

Funding

As was the case with other museums, the late 1980s were a difficult time for the Hudson River Museum when it faced a decrease in funding, uncertainties in future funding and a high level of staff turnover, leading to some instability. The museum was forced to cut back on its operating hours, cut some plans for programming, but was still able to go ahead with the expansion of the planetarium.

The museum experienced a resurgence in the 1990s due to new leadership, receipt of a number of grants and awards, and increased funding from Westchester County and was further able to expand in the in time for its 75th anniversary. The museum also saw it's attendance almost double from 55,000 to 100,000 between 1990 and 1994. Unfortunately the late 1990s saw a downturn in funding due to increased cost of Medicaid and the museum was again forced to face significant cutbacks. In the wake of these cutbacks, the museum began to host private events and offer tours as a means of increasing income.