PDA

View Full Version : Sports Museum



ahuff
05-13-2008, 02:34 PM
Has anyone checked this out?

http://www.sportsmuseum.com/

Eric
05-13-2008, 05:04 PM
There was a pretty big story about this museum last week in the daily news...

http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/2008/05/03/2008-05-03_philip_schwalbs_vision_realized_in_new_l.html?p age=0

Philip Schwalb's vision realized in new lower Manhattan museum

BY WAYNE COFFEY
DAILY NEWS SPORTS WRITER
Thursday, May 8th 2008, 11:58 AM
http://www.nydailynews.com/img/2008/05/04/amd_schwalb.jpg Harrer/Bloomberg Philip Schwalb’s Sports Museum of America opens Wednesday after nearly seven years and $90 million.

http://www.nydailynews.com/img/2008/05/04/amd_globetrotters-jersey.jpg Harrer/Bloomberg Many collectibles from all sports are presented in the museum, including this Harlem Globetrotters' jersey.


It's late morning in lower Manhattan (http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Manhattan), and Philip Schwalb (http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Philip+Schwalb)'s big idea is in the final, frenzied days of construction.
Inside the landmark, limestone-clad walls of the Standard Oil Building at 26 Broadway, two workmen are wheeling a life-size likeness of Sidney Crosby (http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Sidney+Crosby) into place. The floor beneath them simulates ice. A couple of galleries away, an open-air-display stand awaits the original Heisman Trophy, even as electricians install lights, painters paint walls and carpenters hang plaques of former Heisman winners, from the notorious (O.J. Simpson (http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/O.J.+Simpson)) to the noble (John Cappelletti (http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/John+Cappelletti)). And Jimmie Johnson (http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Jimmie+Johnson)'s Nextel Cup (http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/NASCAR+Sprint+Cup+Series)-winning 48 car remains cloaked nearby, beneath a huge piece of white canvas.
Nearly seven years and $90 million into his mission to launch the nation's first all-sports museum - think Smithsonian (http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Smithsonian+Institution), drenched in sweat - Schwalb, 45, seems utterly unfazed as he dodges ladders and traipses through debris days before the grand opening. He has full faith that the audio in the elevators, where you can hear Jack Buck (http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Jack+Buck)'s epic call of Kirk Gibson (http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Kirk+Gibson)'s home run in the 1988 World Series and the rapturous afterglow of Div. I-AA Appalachian State (http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Appalachian+State+University)'s victory over Michigan (http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Michigan) last fall, will be working by the time you read this, just as he knows that the sawhorses will be long gone from the front of the case holding the flag that Jim Craig (http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Jim+Craig) wrapped himself in Lake Placid (http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Lake+Placid).
Call Schwalb an optimist. Also call him an intrepid and dogged chaser of his own vision, against odds at least as great as Craig's U.S. (http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/United+States) hockey team faced against the Soviets in 1980. A project that began in the bedroom of his upper West Side apartment, financed by all the money he could tap out of every credit card he had ($120,000), has morphed into an 87,000-square foot showplace, with a staff of 120 and more high-tech, interactive stuff than a spaceship.
Mel Allen (http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Mel+Allen) isn't in the museum, but if he were, he'd say, "How about that?"
"Sports are more than what you see on the field,' Schwalb says. "They are about the emotions and the stories and the lives behind the games, about the athletes as people, and that's what we want people to walk away with: a feeling of the importance and beauty and inspirational side of sports."
Says Craig, who loaned the museum the flag on display, "The concept of the museum is just wonderful. They're taking the Olympic spirit and putting it in a building. The vision they have isn't old. It's young. It's uplifting. It made me want to grab everything I have and put it in there."
The Sports Museum of America (http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Sports+Museum+of+America) (SMA) opens to the public on Wednesday, a Hail Mary pass from where the Giants' ticker-tape parade began three months ago, and an infield squib from the iconic Charging Bull statue of the financial center. Schwalb, the founder and CEO of the museum, isn't suggesting that he can parlay Michael Phelps (http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Michael+Phelps)' goggles and Lou Gehrig (http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Lou+Gehrig)'s jersey into a fortune rivaling that of Standard Oil (http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Standard+Oil+Company) founder John D. Rockefeller (http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/John+D.+Rockefeller)'s, but he fully expects SMA to draw nearly one million visitors a year, and others in the downtown community are equally optimistic.
Six million tourists visited lower Manhattan last year - double the amount from four years earlier - and when the World Trade Center (http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/World+Trade+Center) Memorial is finished, who knows what that number might be?
"Sport is a universal language that connects people around the world," says Elizabeth Berger (http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Elizabeth+Berger), president of the Downtown Alliance. "I think (the museum) is about history, but it's also about possibility, so I think young people, as well as old-time fans, will really connect with the story the museum is telling."


* * *

It's hard to imagine a more unlikely man to become a major player in the orbits of either sport or the ongoing renaissance of downtown. Born on Long Island (http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Long+Island) and raised in Orlando (http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Orlando+(Florida)), Schwalb laughs as he recalls how he hit .000 his first year in Little League (http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Little+League+Baseball+Inc.), and never played a minute of high school sports. Still he was completely devoted to baseball and basketball, and according to his mother, Nancy Schwalb (http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Nancy+Schwalb), "his ability to persevere was the most important thing to him."
Says Philip Schwalb, "I spent many an hour in my driveway, pretending I was Bill Bradley (http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Bill+Bradley)."
Schwalb enrolled at Duke at 16, got a law degree from Emory and ultimately came to New York (http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/New+York), where he managed a holding company for the Kennedy-Schlossberg family, and was involved in Dr. Edwin Schlossberg (http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Edwin+Schlossberg)'s museum-design business.
On Sept. 10, 2001, his 39th birthday, he treated himself to a trip to Springfield, Mass. (http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Springfield+(Massachusetts)), to visit the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame (http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Naismith+Memorial+Basketball+Hall+of+Fame). The place was nearly deserted, and got Schwalb ruminating about the idea of an all-sports museum in New York, one that wouldn't aim to compete with existing single-sport Halls as much as salute and celebrate the ennobling side of sports.
The next morning, from the corner of Sixth Ave. and 18th St., Schwalb watched the World Trade Center fall. He decided his museum dream couldn't wait.
"I was in almost an altered state," Schwalb says. "I had this feeling that I could be dead tomorrow, and that if I didn't do this thing, I'd always regret it." Ground Zero was still a grim, smoldering disaster site when Schwalb maxed out four credit cards, racking up $40,000 in interest before investors began joining the cause.
"I'm a very conservative person by nature," Schwalb says. "But my whole life I had this belief that I'd have a great idea one day, and when I did, I didn't want to have to be beholden to banks to fund it."
Schwalb eventually secured $52 million in Liberty Bonds - the federal program to help rebuild lower Manhattan - $5 million in other bonds and $43 million in private funding. He is not pinching pennies. He has sunk $3 million into the marketing of the museum's launch this week. He spent $100,000 more on a branding consultant that resulted in a name change, from the National Sports Museum (http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/National+Sports+Museum) to Sports Museum of America, and a new slogan: Finally, greatness has a home.
With funding in place, Schwalb's biggest challenge was getting others in the sports world - Hall of Fames, national governing bodies, other sports-themed museums - to buy into his vision. It took years, but he now has 62 partners, ranging from the U.S. Olympic Committee (http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/United+States+Olympic+Committee) to the Pro Football Hall of Fame (http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Pro+Football+Hall+of+Fame), giving some $3 million annually to the partners, in exchange for their support, artifact donations and mailing lists.
Two of his best hookups have been with the Women's Sports Foundation (http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Women's+Sports+Foundation) and the Heisman Trophy Trust. SMA is the site of the Billie Jean King (http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Billie+Jean+King) International Women's Sports Center, and the permanent home of the Heisman Trophy (its former home, the Downtown Athletic Club, has been closed since 9/11), and will be the site of the annual award telecast every December.
"It's a first-class place that honors the people who have won (the Heisman) and who will win it,' says William Dockery (http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/William+Dockery), president of the Heisman Trophy Trust.

* * *

There are 800 artifacts in the museum, according to curator Laura Purcell (http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Laura+Purcell), from the sweater Mark Messier (http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Mark+Messier) wore the night he guaranteed victory over the Devils, to a size-16 sneaker worn by Moses Malone (http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Moses+Malone) 25 years ago, when he made his famous "Fo', Fo', Fo'" prediction. Many of the artifacts, though, are more personal and idiosyncratic, such as King's report card from November 1952, in which her teacher, Dorothy Polacheck (http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Dorothy+Polacheck), raves about her ability to get along with everyone "because of her excellent sense of fair play and her respect for others' rights and opinions."
There is a 1929 letter from James Naismith (http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/James+Naismith) in which he tells of "making an investigation as to the advantage of a tall center."

Derek Jeter (http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Derek+Jeter)'s Little League jersey is here, and so is then-and-now footage of Chris Paul (http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Chris+Paul) driving to the basket as an 8-year-old, and as an NBA All-Star, alongside film of Venus Williams (http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Venus+Williams) winning a tournament at age 10, and then winning Wimbledon (http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Wimbledon). The museum includes an immersion theatre, 19 original films and 25 interactive exhibits, including ones where you can step behind a goalie mask and experience the sense of a 100-mph slap shot coming at you, or feel the roar and rumble of a NASCAR (http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/NASCAR) race beneath your feet, or make your own broadcast call on The Shot Heard ‘Round the World.
There are 19 galleries in all, and in virtually all of them, the thrust is on a tactile experience; you can swing Tiger Woods (http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Tiger+Woods)' golf club, Alex Rodriguez (http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Alex+Rodriguez)'s bat and Wayne Gretzky (http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Wayne+Gretzky)'s stick. You can touch and smell the Heisman, and strike your best pose beside it.
The museum is a for-profit venture, and Schwalb doesn't conceal that, but what he really wants is for people to be inspired, to change the parameters of what you think is possible, to focus on the capacity for sports to uplift, not drag down.
"We've been asked if we intend to deal with the more disparaging parts of sports - steroids and things like that - but we don't," Schwalb says. "We'd rather focus on what's really beautiful and powerful and good."
As a 7-year-old, Schwalb, who was named for a grandfather who died of cancer, walked around his Orlando neighborhood to raise money for the American Cancer Society (http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/American+Cancer+Society). In high school, he volunteered to tutor newly arrived students from Vietnam (http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Vietnam), his mother says.
"Even though this sounds philosophical, I really believe a great part of this museum is about transformation," Nancy Schwalb says. "Philip has always had a very strong social conscience about wanting to make the world a better place."
Part of the museum proceeds will go to the Jackie Robinson Foundation (http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/The+Jackie+Robinson+Foundation) and Pat LaFontaine (http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Pat+LaFontaine)'s Companions in Courage foundation. Beyond that, Schwalb says he wants visitors to be empowered to pursue their own passions.
Says Jim Craig, "If you think about it, this is a destination of dreams, and how great is that? To be a place where a little kid can walk in and learn about the legacies of these athletes, the stories of people coming from impossible backgrounds and overcoming odds? We've become so sophisticated as a society that we've forgotten how to dream."
Dave Chase (http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Dave+Chase) is the president of the International Sports Heritage Association (http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/International+Sports+Heritage+Association), a worldwide consortium of museums and Hall of Fames.
"I think having a presence in Manhattan, where millions of people will be exposed to it, will be a great thing for the sports-heritage industry," Chase says. "To a lot of people, we are the toy department of the museum industry, and this can help change that perception."
Philip Schwalb certainly hopes so. Opening Day is almost here. Almost seven years after his idea came to him, he steps lively around pails of plaster and a yet-to-be-mounted poster of figure skater Sarah Hughes (http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Sarah+Hughes), looking extremely ready to play ball.
"Sports is the nation's true pastime," Philip Schwalb says. "It's as important a part of popular culture as there is."
Super Pricey, also
Philip Schwalb's Sports Museum (http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Philip+Schwalb's+Sports+Museum) of America is a for-profit enterprise that has big money behind it, and big ambitions for the future. It also has about the heftiest admission price around: $27 for adults, $24 for students and senior citizens.
If you are scoring at home, that is $7 more than the Met or MoMA (http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/The+Museum+of+Modern+Art) - both non-profit museums - and $9 more than the celebrated International Spy Museum (http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/International+Spy+Museum) in Washington (http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Washington), the business model Schwalb has followed.
In New York, only Madame Tussauds (http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/The+Tussauds+Group), Wax Museum ($29) is pricier.
"This is a high number, but I expect they've analyzed their market and feel they can charge that,” says Michael Gibbons (http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Michael+Gibbons), executive director of the Babe Ruth Museum (http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Babe+Ruth+Birthplace+and+Museum) in Baltimore (http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Baltimore), which has two venues that charge $10 and $6, respectively. “It'll be interesting to see how it works."
Schwalb, for his part, says that group discounts and other savings will bring down the average ticket price to the low 20s.
Says Schwalb, "I don't have any concern (about buyer resistance) for one reason: this is the most innovative, creative and technologically advanced museum that people will have ever visited. It's a completely new experience, for about the price of a couple of movie tickets."

Here's a photo gallery of the opening
http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/galleries/sports_museum_lifts_curtain/sports_museum_lifts_curtain.html
http://www.nydailynews.com/img/2008/05/07/gal_sportsmuseum_4.jpg

kingjammy24
05-13-2008, 05:16 PM
and in LA:
The Cypres Sports Museum could feature the greatest collection of sports memorabilia in history

By Greg Johnson, Los Angeles Times
07:44 AM PDT, June 18, 2007

Only the lucky ones so far have made it inside the Cypres Sports Museum, now taking shape in a nondescript office building about a mile south of Staples Center. Admission to the memorabilia collection in downtown Los Angeles has been by invitation only, but next spring, owner Gary Cypres will open the doors to his treasure trove of baseball, football, golf, tennis and other sports memorabilia that he has amassed during a two-decade collecting binge.

Former Dodgers owner Peter O'Malley ranks the Dodgers' section of the Cypres collection as "the best that I know of," and is ecstatic that the museum will be open to the public. "It's too good to only be seen by appointment. Schoolchildren, adults, collectors and baseball fans, not just from the U.S., but from Japan and all over the world should be able to see it."

The museum's crown jewel might be the uniform Babe Ruth wore during his barnstorming tour of Japan after the 1934 season, and that Cypres purchased for $800,000. Or maybe it's the T206 Honus Wagner trading card that represents a Holy Grail among collectors — a similar one in perfect condition sold recently for $2 million.

Among the nearly 10,000 items in the 63-year-old businessman's collection: an early Heisman Trophy, an original cornice stone from Yankee Stadium, a handful of infield dirt scooped from Ebbets Field before the first game was played in 1913 and a sign hung by the demolition company that leveled the fabled Brooklyn Dodgers ballpark in 1960.

Cooperstown is baseball, Canton sticks with football and Springfield revolves around basketball, but Cypres' collection covers many sports. "His museum has such great breadth and depth," said Dodgers owner Frank McCourt. "It goes far beyond the Dodgers and baseball to almost every sport. It's an amazing little place."

There are stories around every corner: Cast-iron putters. Rowing equipment. Original basketball hoops — the kind with closed bottoms. Game jerseys worn by Bill Russell, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Willis Reed and most of the NBA's legendary big men. Leather football helmets from Red Grange's era. A Dodgers' 1981 World Series trophy. Babe Ruth's shotgun, plus the travel trunk he hauled during the Japanese tour. The bat that Ruth used to swat his 58th and 59th home runs (it cost Cypres more than $400,000). A bench fashioned during the 1950s from balls and bats signed by such luminaries as Ruth, Ty Cobb, Cy Young and Dizzy Dean.

The museum has antique golf clubs, sports-themed arcade and board games dating to the 1800s and hundreds of movie posters featuring Sonja Heinie, Buster Crabbe and other athletes who made Hollywood star turns. The walls are covered with uniforms, championship pennants and analog scoreboards.

Los Angeles Sports Council Chairman Alan Rothenberg says local sports fans will embrace the museum when it opens, and that word will spread quickly among out-of-town fans. "Done right, it could become one of the 'must' stops for tourists," said Rothenberg who has toured the museum. "It's only a question of how much he chooses to expose it. It could become an icon."

The New York-born Cypres, who played basketball at Hofstra University before going into business and settling in L.A., made his fortune in the finance, mortgage and travel agency businesses. He began collecting in the 1980s with a handful of stylish French tennis rackets that date to the 1800s. His collection mushroomed during the last decade and overflowed his house, attic and several storage bins. Four years ago he sold one of his businesses and turned the space into a museum. Cypres estimates its value, along with the building that houses it, at $30 million

Cypres serves as designer, curator and all-around museum handyman. He wants fans, particularly children, to get as close as possible to the exhibits and many items are out in the open, not under glass. He also is writing the panels that explain the exhibits.

Instead of subdued spotlights there are banks of fluorescent lights. "I like bright places, and many museums are dark," Cypres said. And, as for the prospect of 100-year-old uniforms fading under the bright lights? "I figure that they've lasted for 100 years and are probably going to be OK for another 100 years."

Experts say it would be hard to duplicate what Cypres has amassed. "A lot of people talk about opening this kind of museum, but nobody ever does it," said David Hunt, owner of an Exton, Pa.-based sports auction house that helped Cypres build his collection.

One exhibit honors the imaginary young woman who issues the invitation to "Take Me Out to The Ballgame" in baseball's unofficial anthem. (The little-known first line: "Katie Casey was baseball mad, had the fever and had it bad.") Another will showcase a century-old stained glass window from a German elementary school that depicts an angel standing watch over children playing baseball.

What separates his museum from other collections, memorabilia experts said, is its broad scope and emphasis on technology that has changed sports.

The depth is evident in the baseball glove collection that includes some of the earliest, handball-like leather gloves, as well as subsequent gloves with such improvements as padding, webbing and pockets. There is a golf ball from the mid-1800s fashioned from wet feathers and stitched leather. When the golf ball dried out, the feathers expanded, the leather contracted and the golfer had a relatively hard object to swat — at least for a few rounds.
Cypres, who is married and has five children, jokingly refers to the items in his collection as "my children, my family." And, like most proud parents, he has plenty of stories to tell.

He paid more than $400,000 for the 1941 Heisman Trophy, in part because he wanted one of the earliest trophies to have been awarded. He gladly paid a premium for University of Minnesota running back Bruce Smith's trophy (the seventh handed out) because he already had a movie poster for "Smith of Minnesota," which gave a Hollywood treatment to the athlete's career.

One room houses 25 hauntingly beautiful oil paintings of such baseball Hall of Famers as Ruth, Cobb, Wagner and Willie Mays. A Detroit Tigers second baseman had commissioned the artwork to hang on the walls of his car dealership. They had languished in storage until Cypres bought them at auction.

On another occasion, Cypres waited 20 years for a collector to sell him a pair of baseball gloves that date to about the 1870s and are among the oldest in existence. "I knew where they were, I just had to wait to get my hands on them," he said.

Cypres is an avid collector, according to McCourt, who got into an unintentional bidding war with him several years ago over the last big league game uniform that Ruth wore when he was a Dodgers first base coach in 1938. McCourt realized who won only later in the day during a telephone conversation with Cypres: "All of a sudden I realized he was the son-of-a-gun I was bidding against," McCourt said.

"I probably ended up paying twice what I would have because we were bidding against each other," Cypres said. "We don't do that anymore."

Cypres continues to juggle the museum layout to match his evolving vision. Separate rooms honor Ruth, Joe DiMaggio, the Yankees, and — given Cypres' long-standing loyalties — the Brooklyn (and later, Los Angeles) Dodgers. The latter includes a hand-written letter from 1889 that welcomed the Dodgers into the National League.

Cypres isn't done collecting.

In 1941 DiMaggio set a record that still stands by getting hits in 56 consecutive games. Cypres recently purchased the baseball that would have given DiMaggio his 57th consecutive game hit — had Cleveland Indians infielder Ken Keltner not grabbed it. DiMaggio subsequently autographed the ball, adding some kind words for Keltner. Cypres bought the ball at auction.

The one uncertainty, as Cypres fine-tunes exhibits and upgrades the museum to meet building codes, is the Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency's proposal to dramatically reshape the surrounding neighborhood.

If he were forced to move, Cypres said that he would be hard-pressed to find another affordable location for such a large collection : "I'm not going to wait for the CRA to make up its mind. I'm going to open my museum," he said.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
rudy.

cjmedina1
05-13-2008, 05:23 PM
Is this really in L A ? If so I want to go there and check it out

Carlie Medina III
carliemedinaiii@sbcglobal.net

suave1477
05-13-2008, 09:17 PM
Carlie no its here in New York.

I didn't even know about this place but after seeing this post earlier todday im gonna go check it out possibly over this weekend.

I would go after work but is weird the close early.

They take you on a tour guide. I cant imagine how big this place is or even how this places is gonna stay open.

Since the claim to be the biggest ever and all that yet there was hardly and advertisement for this places except for as far as I knwo the 2 articles posted here.

You would think for a 90 million dollar exhibit they would have a major advertisemtn campaign.

both-teams-played-hard
05-13-2008, 11:45 PM
Is this really in L A ? If so I want to go there and check it out

Carlie Medina III
carliemedinaiii@sbcglobal.net

Two museums. One in NYC, one in L.A. The one in L.A. is by invitation only. For those that live outside of L.A., this means the entrance is surrounded by a red, velvet rope.

Dewey2007
05-13-2008, 11:59 PM
BTPH, have you gotten an invitation to step inside the red velvet rope to check out the place??

both-teams-played-hard
05-14-2008, 01:15 AM
BTPH, have you gotten an invitation to step inside the red velvet rope to check out the place??
No, I'm not on the list. Need more plastic surgery and hair dye.

kings418
05-14-2008, 06:34 AM
There is another great museum in California called the Newport Sports Museum. It is located on Fashion Island in Newport Beach. They have an amazing collection of game used jerseys from all the major sports with hockey jerseys making up the majority. If you are ever in the area, it is well worth the trip, and the admission is free.

Vince

cjmedina1
05-14-2008, 10:08 AM
Thanks for the info...

Carlie Medina III
carliemedinaiii@sbcglobal.net

TNTtoys
05-16-2008, 01:22 PM
If any of you are planning to go to this museum in NY, AAA is offering discounted admission ($5.00 off) if you have a membership.