Anchoring the southernmost tip of Manhattan  Across the water, Lady Liberty lifts her lamp and Ellis Island marks the gateway through which millions flowed into this country seeking refuge. The Museum’s meaningful location inspires its mission.

The museum presents the staggering tapestry of life interwoven with death. 

The Core building’s six-sided shape and six-tiered 

The six sided roof is also reminiscent of the six-pointed Star of David  Sheathed in light granite, the three-story structure is hexagonal. Symbolizing the Museum’s commitment to representing Jewish life and culture as it has endured and evolved.

The concrete louvered roof rises 85 feet in the air, as a reminder of the six million Jews who perished in the Holocaust.  

The building cost $21.5 million 

The Museum was incorporated and chartered in 1984, and built by 1997 

The six sided building, opened in 1997, contains the museum's core exhibition galleries 

Rows of square windows punctuate the walls. 

The Morgenthau Wing, opened in 2003, contains the museum's offices, theater, and classrooms, as well as the Irving Schneider and Family exhibition gallery 

The museum's collection contains more than 30,000 objects relating to Jewish history and the Holocaust 

Lobby 

Edmond J. Safra Hall  The Museum's mission is to educate diverse visitors about Jewish life before, during, and after the Holocaust.

'Eyewitness: Photographs By B.A. Van Sise' exhibit, 2021  The Museum’s first public art installation features portraits of Holocaust survivors living in New York City. Photojournalist B.A. Van Sise spent the past year photographing survivors who are part of the Museum’s Speakers Bureau and who serve as Gallery Educators. Eyewitness was commissioned for Holocaust Remembrance Day at the Museum. The installation consists of 31 photographs of Holocaust survivors (between 4 and 13 feet high) filling the windows of the Museum’s façade and windows along the Reflection Passage on the Museum’s third floor.

2003 - Garden of Stones  "Garden of Stones", an eloquent garden plan of trees growing from stone, is Andy Goldsworthy's design for the Memorial Garden of The Museum of Jewish Heritage - A Living Memorial to the Holocaust. Eighteen boulders form a series of narrow pathways in the Memorial Garden's 4,150-square-foot space. A single dwarf oak sapling emerges from the top of each boulder, growing straight from the stone. As the trees mature in the coming years, each will grow to become a part of the stone, its trunk widening and fusing to the base. The work reflects the tension between the ephemeral and the timeless, between young and old, and between the unyielding and the pliable. More importantly, it demonstrates how elements of nature can survive in seemingly impossible places. In Jewish tradition, stones are often placed on graves as a sign of remembrance. Here, Goldsworthy brings stone and trees together as a representation of life cycles intertwined.