Hudson River Museum - History

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 house 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. In 1972 it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

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 (9.3 ha) site, on which a 2006 expansion attempted to better join the Glenview Mansion with the modern 1969 additions.