State Grants $14 Million For Three Cultural Institution Projects Across Brooklyn

Governor Kathy Hochul has announced $14 million in state funding for expansion and infrastructure improvement projects at three cultural institutions in Brooklyn. Administered by the Dormitory Authority of the State of New York, the funding allocates $7 million to the Brooklyn Children’s Museum in Crown Heights, $5 million to the Hispanic Information and Telecommunications Network at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and $2 million to the Brooklyn Academy of Music in Fort Greene.

Brooklyn Childrens Museum Earth Science Garden Rendering – East Side. Credit: Gans and Company.

The largest allocation will advance the Earth Science Garden at the Brooklyn Children’s Museum, located at 145 Brooklyn Avenue at St. Mark’s Avenue, alongside Brower Park. The project reimagines the museum’s courtyard as Brooklyn’s first earth science learning garden, creating a year-round hands-on learning environment, and will also fund upgrades to the museum’s infrastructure. Founded in 1899 as the world’s first children’s museum, the institution occupies a 102,000-square-foot building expanded in 2008 by Rafael Viñoly Architects, clad in yellow ceramic tiles, and was the first museum in New York City to achieve LEED certification.

HITN Rooftop Studio Rendering – Building 292 Brooklyn Navy Yard. Courtesy of HITN.

HITN, the nonprofit Spanish-language educational network reaching more than 35 million households nationwide, will use its $5 million to develop a 17,000-square-foot rooftop production facility and event space at its headquarters in Building 292 at 63 Flushing Avenue in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. The network expanded in the building under a ten-year lease signed in 2018, adding 25,000 square feet of interior space and a 15,000-square-foot LEED-certified rooftop studio on the structure’s north-facing roof.

BAM Peter Jay Sharp Building. Credit: H3 Hardy Collaboration Architecture.

The Brooklyn Academy of Music will receive $2 million for critical repairs and renovations to the building envelope of the Peter Jay Sharp Building at 30 Lafayette Avenue in Fort Greene. Designed by Herts & Tallant in the Renaissance Revival style and opened in 1908, the U-shaped structure rises from a high gray granite base with cream-colored brick trimmed in terracotta, and houses the 2,109-seat Howard Gilman Opera House and the four-screen BAM Rose Cinemas. The funding will address aging exterior conditions and mitigate water intrusion and weather-related damage.

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