| The Wild Center | |
|---|---|
The Wild Center viewed from Rainbow Bridge |
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| Established | 2006 |
| Location | Tupper Lake, New York |
| Type | Science museum |
| Director | Stephanie Ratcliffe |
| Curator | David Gross |
| Website | www.wildcenter.org |
The Wild Center is a natural history museum that opened July 4, 2006 in New York state's Adirondack Park. The museum and the exhibits were designed by The Office of Charles P. Reay with the St. Louis architectural firm HOK. The museum occupies a 31-acre (130,000 m2) site in the town of Tupper Lake, New York, the approximate geographic center of the six million acre (24,000 km²) Adirondack Park.
The museum mixes up the indoors and outdoors on a trail-filled campus. There are four primary exhibit areas, The Pataki Hall of the Adirondacks contains The Living River Trail that circles the hall with life animal exhibits and a waterfall with the Center's live otters. The Big Wolf Great Hall contains a Lean-to and the glacial ice wall and is the site for the Center's live animal encounters.Other exhibit areas include the Flammer Panoramas Theater and the New Path green building trail that showcases the Center's green systems. The Center features live exhibits and live animals, including river otters, birds, amphibians and fish. Indoors, a marsh appears to flow into a real pond that laps at the outside of the building, and the calls of live owls and otters mix with the splashing cascade of a trout-filled indoor stream. High definition films in a wide-screen theater explore the region and showcase fascinating reports from field scientists researching everything from moose to loons to alpine summits.
This green museum has earned LEED silver from the U.S. Green Building Council and is the first LEED certified museum in the State of New York.[1]