The paint is still drying and the carpet glue has nearly set in the new American Revolution Museum at Yorktown building, which opened this week as the Yorktown Victory Center’s replacement.
The official opening of the museum — when the name will shift from victory center to its new title — is not until next year. But the land where the victory center building is located is needed for an expanded outdoor interpretive area and the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation did not want to shutter the museum, so the new building has been pressed into service even though some of it is still under construction.
The new building opened March 9. It is a far cry from the 40-year-old victory center building tucked against the wood line. Its massive brick façade and portico line the edge of Water Street, offering a wide vista of the York River west of the George P. Coleman Memorial Bridge.
About 27,500-square-feet of gallery space is still under construction, however some parts of the museum are ready for guests, including classrooms, a 170-seat theater, a timeline exhibit detailing major events before and during the revolution, an expanded gift shop and much of the outdoor interpretive area.
Interpretive Program Manager Homer Lanier said it was important to JYF — the state-run organization which operates Jamestown Settlement and the new museum — to not suspend operations at Yorktown during construction, even if it the project would be completed sooner.
Until late 2016, the museum will lack some of its major draws like greatly expanded versions of the museum galleries that defined the victory center. A 4-D attraction with a live-action film about the siege at Yorktown, moving seats and technology that re-creates smoke and gunpowder scents will also not be prepared until late next year.
“You’re going to feel like you’re standing there in the middle of all the fighting going on,” Lanier said.
The largest component of the gallery is 22,500 square feet devoted to the story of the American revolution, from the 1750s until the decade following the close of the revolution, when the founding fathers built a government and westward expansion began in earnest.
The remaining 5,000 square feet is reserved for special exhibits that will each last about nine months.
Crews are busy at work in those portions of the 80,000-square-foot building while groups of schoolchildren and tourists stick to what has been finished. The education wing of the building is done, and already classes are visiting it for hands-on instruction from JYF staff and infantry drills on an outdoor grassy courtyard.
Lanier said the new building was designed also to be used as a site for events. Visitors who enter through the front door find a huge atrium separated from the 170-seat theater by a temporary wall. The wall can be opened and the stadium-style seats in the theater retracted into the wall to create an open area capable of comfortably seating a few hundred people at tables for a dinner or meetings.
The five classrooms in the education center also have retractable walls, allowing them to be joined into larger rooms. They are outfitted with modern projection equipment, smartboards and television screens for hands-on lessons and to meet the needs of those who use the center for meetings.
Construction on the $50 million project began in 2012. Additional money from private donations will be used to help build the galleries, outdoor exhibits and educational resources.
The new building, located at 200 Water St. in Yorktown, is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily.
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