South Street Seaport Museum

When originally opened as a museum, by Peter and Norma Stanford, the focus of the Seaport Museum conservation was to be an educational historic site, with shops mostly operating as reproductions of working environments found during the Seaport's heyday.

In late October 2012, Hurricane Sandy heavily damaged the Seaport. Tidal floods of up to 7 feet (2.1 m) deep inundated much of the Seaport, causing extensive damage that forced an end to plans to merge the Seaport Museum with the Museum of the City of New York.

The new South Street Seaport Museum re-opened under the management of the Museum of the City of New York. The new-look museum uses all three floors of exhibition space for the first time, featuring a fresh design that flows from the street to the galleries. Installations create a dialogue between past and present, ranging from a look back to Manhattan Island in the early 1600s, to a special Occupy Wall Street photography gallery. Highlights from the museum’s maritime collection, including model ships, ships in bottles, and historic tools of the Seaport, are displayed in new and innovative ways.