Ten years ago the Children Museum’s “Lantern Building” began to illuminate the North Shore, and to celebrate the anniversary the museum will offer free admission Saturday.
As part of the festivities families can help the museum build a giant lantern. There will also be a family resource fair with booths from the Pittsburgh Pirates, the Center for Women and CEASEfire PA.
“Kids and parents will get a passport when they come in, and they’ll get it stamped at each of the stations. And the fair will be outside of our theater area, and in our theater we are going to have youth performers,” said Museum Director of Marketing , Bill Schlageter.
Some of the children performing will be from Pittsburgh Youth Symphony Orchestra; there will also be a drumming group, and dance performances.
“The skin that is on that building consists of 43,000 frosted plexi[glass] panels. All of those panels can move, and are moving everyday as the wind flutters through, but at night when the building is lit with all of those shimmering panels, the building is a gorgeous looking lantern,” said Schlageter.
When the Lantern was built in 2004 it connected the historic 1890’s post office building, to the shutdown 1939 Buhl Planetarium, which the museum renovated. The new building quadrupled the size of the museum to 80,000 square feet. In the past ten years the museum has added new exhibits, parks and gardens to the surrounding area, and is thinking about expanding further.
“We are working with the community in taking a look at the space to the east of us, in the old Carnegie Library building, looking at the possibilities of what might be there in the future,” said Schlageter.
