South Street Seaport Museum

The South Street Seaport Museum preserves and interprets the history of New York City as a world port, a place where goods, labor and cultures are exchanged through work, commerce, and the interaction of diverse communities.

From transatlantic shipping to immigration to New York’s rise to economic pre-eminence, the waterfront world has played a critical role in developments that have transformed the entire city. Designated by Congress as America’s National Maritime Museum in 1998, the South Street Seaport Museum is located in a 12 square-block historic district on the East River in Lower Manhattan, the site of the original port of New York City.

The Museum is comprised of over 30,000 square feet of exhibition space and educational facilities in New York City’s largest concentration of restored early 19th-century commercial buildings. The Museum houses exhibition galleries, a working 19th-century print shop, an archaeology center, a maritime library, a craft center, a marine life conservation lab, and the largest privately-owned fleet of historic ships in the country.