The National Children's Museum is a 150,000-sq.-foot (13,000-m²) interactive museum for children that is planned to open in 2013 in Prince George's County, Maryland, as part of National Harbor. Its previous facility at H Street NE, Washington, D.C., called the Capital Children's Museum, closed in August 2004.[1]
Planning for the National Children's Museum began in 1999, when the Capital Children's Museum Board of Trustees identified the need for a new national institution for children in the Washington region. Congress designated CCM as the National Children's Museum in 2003.
The National Children's Museum is projected to attract 600,000 visitors in its first year of operation, 75 percent of whom will be from the Washington area. Tourists are expected to make up the remaining 25 percent.[2]