According to the director and founder of the museum, Carol Willis, the skyline with the silhouettes of skyscrapers is the symbol of the "Big Apple City" for the whole world, and it was there that this type of structures appeared and developed.
The small hall of the two-story museum is completely sheathed with steel sheets polished to a mirror finish. "Vertical Versailles" by architect Roger Duffy of Skidmore Owings & Merrill visually doubles the space.
Most of the exhibits are dedicated to the "golden era" of high-rise construction - 1912-1930, when the Chrysler Building and the Empire State Building appeared. These are drawings, unique photographs and layouts.
After September 11, 2001, the attitude towards skyscrapers changed - now they are also symbols of the fragility of Western civilization.
But the museum's architect Roger Duffy remarked: "The museum is just the entrance, the real museum of skyscrapers is New York itself."
