If you’ve driven past the Museum recently, you’ll see signs of our expansion becoming a reality. We couldn’t be more excited!
The work on our new 150-seat Hot Glass Show theatre, slated to open in July, is almost complete. We’ll be very happy to remove the plastic covering on the outside wall to showcase the full beauty of that space to the outside world. When the theatre is complete, visitors will be able to see hot glassmaking both inside the theatre and through the many open walls that will look into the theater.
Rendering of the new 150-seat Hot Glass Show Theater
The completion of this slightly larger new Hot Glass Show space will allow us to provide our popular Hot Glass Show glassblowing demonstrations without any interruption to our visitors during construction. We’ll then tear down the old Hot Glass Show stage and begin the renovation of the former Steuben factory building into an additional (and amazing) 500-seat Hot Glass Show and hotshop space.
On the north side of the building, the fences went up last week to restrict access to the construction area. On Wednesday morning, a crane came in to change out air handling units. All buildings, and especially Museums, need good air handling.
Part of the old building on the north side will be demolished to make room for the new North Wing contemporary glass gallery. On that building stands a unit which our operations staff lovingly refer to as Penthouse 4 and which contains two working air handlers that will no longer exist once the building is demolished. The crane was here to remove some old air handlers, and replace them with a new, larger air handler.
Loading in the new air handler