Today, South Street Seaport Museum held a Building Rededication Ceremony for its A.A. Thomson & Co.warehouse, a historic 1868 building recognized for its architectural merit in the South Street Seaport Historic District. Following the extensive restoration and renovation, the Museum rededicates the historic warehouse to a renewed purpose, converting this former industrial space to an education venue, welcoming all to see themselves reflected in the Museum. 

At this press event, the Museum announced that tickets are now on sale for the inaugural exhibition Maritime City that will span the first three floors of the newly-renovated building. Opening to the public on March 12, 2025, the exhibition will showcase a wide range of objects from the Museum’s Collections of 80,000 works of art, historical artifacts, and archival records, representing a wide range of time periods, themes, and materials.

The opening of Maritime City and the reopening of A.A. Thomson & Co. will be accompanied by a range of dynamic public programs designed to invite visitors of all ages to make a deeper connection to New York’s rich maritime heritage.

Maritime City | Beginning March 2025
Tickets Now Available | Wednesday–Sunday | 11am–5pm | 213 Water Street | Pay What You Wish

Pre-book your Pay What You Wish timed tickets today for Maritime City, a highly-anticipated forthcoming exhibition that reveals how New York City, as we know it today, arose from the sea. Throughout the extensive three-floor exhibition, you will see how the city’s identity as a global capital of culture and finance is rooted in its origins as a seaport. As you walk through 525 carefully-curated objects from the Seaport Museum’s Collections and Archives, you will discover how the waterways, people, and industries of the Greater New York area—including all the boroughs, Long Island, and the Lower Hudson Valley—led to the creation of a truly global metropolis.

In Maritime City, you will experience a celebration of all the communities that have come together to grow New York. This exhibition tells how, for four centuries, the port of New York has connected people to the world through the exchange of goods, ideas, languages, and cultures. By sharing the material culture of New York City and its people, the objects on display highlight stories of the working class people employed by ships, shipping lines, and other local industries throughout history, as well as the emigrant workers and immigrant families that came through the port as their first stop in America. A selection of artifacts and artworks on view share the stories of enslaved Africans, and honor the Indigenous people who were the first inhabitants of the region the Seaport Museum now calls home.

Maritime City is scheduled to open to the public in March of 2025. Reserve your tickets now to secure your place and join the Seaport Museum’s mailing list to be one of the first to receive updates and announcements. southstreetseaportmuseum.org/maritime-city/

About Pay What You Wish Tickets
Admission to the Seaport Museum is Pay What You Wish during regular open hours. This means you are invited to decide what valuation is right for you—take advantage of free in-person admission, the full ticket price, or name your price of anything in between. As a nonprofit organization, your ticket purchase directly supports the Museum’s mission to tell the story of “Where New York Begins." seaportmuseum.org/general-admission

More About the Exhibition
Housed within the historic A.A. Thomson & Co. building—a historical artifact in its own right—Maritime Cityshowcases a wide range of objects from the Museum’s Collections of 80,000 works of art, historical artifacts, and archival records representing a wide range of time periods, themes, and materials. Objects on view include long-held artifacts and archival materials not previously seen by the public, alongside recent acquisitions that highlight the present and future of the Museum’s collecting. With such a wide array of items on view, this all-ages exhibition promises something for everyone.

Highlights within this expansive exhibition include:
The 22-foot long 1935 builder model of the celebrated ocean liner RMS Queen Mary
Paintings by the renowned maritime painters James Edward Buttersworth, Antonio Jacobsen, and Gordon Grant
Unusually large turn-of-the-century glass plate negatives by the photography studio of George P. Hall & Son—including one of the fireworks display for the opening of the Williamsburg Bridge
A rare surviving wheel from the French ocean liner SS Normandie
Recently acquired items such as a contemporary fine art photograph by artist Jeremy Dennis, an enrolled Tribal Member of the Shinnecock Indian Nation, and more to come and explore.
Fascinating miniatures and uniquely small artifacts that create a “Corner of Curiosities”

Also on view are examples of archeology that have taken place in the South Street Seaport Historic District and Lower Manhattan, and historical and modern views of New York from the 1600s to today. These include artworks that document milestones in New York history such as the physical expansion of the land in Lower Manhattan at the turn of the 19th century, the opening of the Brooklyn Bridge in 1883, the dedication of the Statue of Liberty in 1886, and the containerization of the Port of New York and New Jersey in the mid-20th century. Just as the history of New York is a combination of stories, Maritime City employs artifacts to highlight the historic mosaic of a global metropolis born from its connections to the sea.

Additionally, Maritime City features educational items that invite you to get hands-on with history. Across all three floors, visitors of all ages are invited to further engage with the exhibition through interactive features designed to captivate every interest to better understand how New York City was formed by its oceanic links to the world.

Visitors are invited to:
Open flat file drawers to uncover historical arts and crafts techniques, including technical drawings and ship plans, letterpress broadsides, lithographs, and wood engravings and discover the tools used to create these fascinating pieces
Use stereographic viewers to see how people experienced places around the globe in the 19th century
Touch and feel select artifacts such as Dutch-era bricks and oyster shells from the Museum’s teaching collection
Explore items from the Museum’s archives and special collections, too fragile for display, through video displays and touch screens

About A.A. Thomson & Co. Warehouse
This Italianate cast iron and stone warehouse, located at 213–215 Water Street, was designed by the renowned New York City architect Stephen D. Hatch (1839–1894) in 1868 for Alexander and William A. Thomson of A.A. Thomson & Co.. Before the structure was built, this lot was occupied by two three-story buildings, originally part of a 1750 water lot grant, on what would have been considered one of the principal streets in New York City.

Working with the celebrated preservation architecture firm Beyer Blinder Belle, the Seaport Museum is transforming the historic 12,000-square-foot warehouse into a large-scale exhibition space, a hub for engaging educational programming, and a gathering space for the community. Once renovated, the building, which has not been updated in decades, will include a new climate control system, systems hardened against flooding, an elevator, and full accessibility to welcome all visitors into previously inaccessible space on “little” Water Street. seaportmuseum.org/about-thomson

About the South Street Seaport Museum
The South Street Seaport Museum, located in the heart of the historic seaport district in New York City, preserves and interprets the history of New York as a great port city. Founded in 1967, the Museum houses an extensive collection of works of art and artifacts, a maritime reference library, exhibition galleries and education spaces, working 19th century print shops, and an active fleet of historic vessels that all work to tell the story of “Where New York Begins.” seaportmuseum.org

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• March 12, 2025

  March 12, 2025
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