The American Kennel Club is scheduled to open next month its new Museum of the Dog in New York City, following a relocation from a Greek Revival-style residence in St. Louis, Missouri, to a 48-story glass tower in Manhattan.
The club has leased 60,000 square feet at 101 Park Ave. for space it plans to split between the museum and its new corporate offices. The agreement covers space in the lobby, third and fifth floors of the 48-story, 1.28 million-square-foot tower. While the museum will span the lobby and third floors, the club’s corporate headquarters will be located on the fifth floor.
It’s a new direction for 101 Park, which has never housed a museum. Rather, the corner building in Manhattan’s Grand Central neighborhood is a hub of legal and financial services firms. Law firms comprise its three anchor tenants: Morgan Lewis & Bockius occupies about 272,000 square feet there, while Kelly Drye has almost 121,700 square feet and the offices of Curtis Mallet-Prevost Colt & Mosle comprise nearly 92,000 square feet.
The deal with the American Kennel Club brings 101 Park Ave. to near full occupancy.
Peter S. Kalikow, president of family-held HJ Kalikow, the building’s landlord, said that AKC’s decision to build its new museum with 101 Park Ave. “reflects the building’s strategic location for visitors and commerce alike, as well as our desire to have tenants that add prestige to this world-famous address.”
Club Chairman Ron Menaker called the move “reflective of our growth and expansion as organizations.”
The museum’s two floors, currently being retrofitted, will host an installation of 180 art pieces and a half-dozen interactive exhibits within a double-height atrium space. The digital exhibits include a “Meet the Breeds” educational touchscreen and a kiosk that photographs visitors and then displays the dog breed that most resembles them. Art will be rotated roughly every six months; the club said it currently has about eight times as many pieces of art in storage as it does on display.
The relocation is also a return home for the Museum of the Dog, which the American Kennel Club founded in 1982 and first housed in the New York Life Building at 51 Madison Ave. In 1987, the museum relocated to St. Louis, Missouri, to the Jarvis House. That historic home, built in 1853, was once owned by Edgar Queenie, son of Monsanto founder John Francis Queeny.
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