Visitor's Center Atrium - The Cradle of Aviation Museum

Recently, after months of careful planning, much paperwork, and numerous meetings, the Cradle of Aviation Museum successfully suspended eight major artifacts in our four-story glass atrium, the entrance to the Reckson Visitor Center. The centerpiece is a Grumman F-11 in Blue Angels colors. This spectacular aircraft is hanging in a shallow dive right over the main entrance doorway with its nose pointed at the door and its tail at the third floor balcony level. The central location, with wraparound balconies providing three viewing levels, enables the visitor to see the aircraft from perspectives usually restricted to other pilots flying in close formation.

The 1929 Fleet biplane is dramatically suspended in a 60 degree bank between the second-to-third floor stair landing and the glass atrium wall. In this location, the visitor on the stairs has the unusual vantage of looking right into the two open cockpits.

A pretty Sperry Messenger from 1922 now hangs right over what will become the entrance to the Donald Axinn Exhibit Hall. This perfect replica will set the aerospace theme as the visitor enters the exhibit hall.

Additional artifacts now hanging in the Reckson Visitor Center are a 1959 Gyrodyne XRON, a Merlin Hang Glider, a 1998 Paramotor FX1, a 1984 Veligdans sailplane, a skydiver and a modern EVA astronaut in a Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU).

After years of collection and restoration, the atrium artifacts were readied for hanging during months of engineering hanging system design work, as well as last minute touchups and cleaning. The New Breed Corporation, contracted to do the heavy lifting, was able to mobilize the heavy equipment, hang the artifacts, and demobilize within a one-week period (August 7-12, 2000). All artifacts were installed in their proper locations with a 5 to 1 structural safety margin

The Cradle of Aviation Museumís design team is very proud of the final results and we have learned many lessons during the process. Our next challenge will be in October when we suspend multiple aircraft in Hangar #3 of the Donald Axinn Exhibit Hall. Those exhibit areas include the following galleries: Dream of Flight, Hempstead Plains, Aviation Today, World War One, and Exploring Space. These designs are well under way and we look forward to this fall when we will complete another incremental step towards our projected opening date in the Spring of 2001.