Premium Member Book
(Feb 2003)
. . . . nothing about museums is as splendid as their entrances—the sudden vault, the shapely cornices . . . the broad stairs leading upward into heaven knows what mansions of expectantly hushed treasure.
—John Updike (1981, P. 17)
The American Museum of Natural History in New York has such a “splendid” entrance off Central Park West. You climb broad steps surrounding a weathered statue of Theodore Roosevelt, pass through revolving doors to enter a grand mansion with a high, vaulted ceiling supported by massive coral-colored terrazzo pillars.