Morton Arboretum - Visitor Center

Visitor Center

Built in 2004, the 36,000 sq ft (3,300 m2) Visitor Center is a wide-open portal to launch visitors into the Arboretum’s 1,700-acre (6.9 km2) outdoor museum of trees. Designed by David Woodhouse Architects, its major elements are arranged to shape “inside-out/outside-in” spaces that take advantage of varied views of the Arboretum’s horticultural collections. “Gateway buildings are a specialty, and this one, which shelters an information center, restaurant, gift shop and lecture hall, follows his custom of slipping smaller structures under a dramatic roof element.” The building’s design includes wood representing the Arboretum’s collections and incorporates sustainable features such as permeable pavers in the parking lots and local fieldstone salvaged from a predecessor building.

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