by KYW's Karin Phillips
The "Please Touch" museum is closing the doors of its old home on North 21st Street for good on Labor Day. So, this long weekend is the last time that families can play in the old site.
The building at 210 North 21st Street, behind the Franklin Institute, has been the home of the Please Touch museum for the past 25 years, but museum officials have been looking for a new and larger home for the past 11.
Museum president and CEO Nancy Kolb (above) says the place has been crowded lately as families stop by to say goodbye, as she is doing in her own way:
"My office looks right over the gallery floor. That won't be true in the new space. The atrium with the natural light is really wonderful, but we rather duplicate that in the great hall at Memorial Hall."
The official closing ceremony is noon on Monday. The new museum space opens October 18th in Fairmount Park (see related story), and during September and early October a Please Touch "play patrol" will visit various Philadelphia neighborhoods.
The Maurice Sendak exhibit "Wild Things" will not be going to the new Memorial Hall space. Kolb says she and staff will miss it, and she suspects that a lot of regular visitors will, too. But she says many familiar exhibits are being moved:
"Most of the rest of what people have loved here is going with us. The grocery store will be three times the size that it is here. The Septa bus is out being retrofitted as we speak."
The official locking of the door at 210 North 21st will come at noon on Monday. Visitors will join museum staff in counting down the final seconds.
(Photo by KYW's Karin Phillips)
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