New Yorkers See a Cabinet of Liberty Figurines for $8 in Williamsburg
A Williamsburg storefront museum keeps the city's castoffs, from Liberty figurines to L train paint chips, a few blocks from its first window display.
🚇 What the City Threw Away
The permanent collection starts on the wall and keeps going. Subway tokens, terracotta fragments from landmark buildings, geological core samples, Statue of Liberty postcards and paint chips pulled off the L train platform share a room the size of a shop. Most of the looking is on you: the pieces that do not look like much reward a second pass, and the afternoon changes shape.
The museum began in 2002 as a window display in founder Dave Herman's apartment at Havemeyer and Grand Streets. Passersby pressed a button on the building and heard his voice walk them through the objects. The storefront moved to Metropolitan Avenue in January 2006, a few blocks from that corner, and the habit of keeping what the city discards carried over.
Admission is ten dollars, eight for New York residents with valid ID, five for college students, educators and visitors 65 and over. Open Thursday to Sunday, noon to six, and closed Thanksgiving, Christmas Day and New Year's Day. Official info at cityreliquary.org, checked November 4.
