Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, New York, USA, is a Smithsonian Affiliate museum that documents the history of play in American culture. Established in 1969 and based initially on the personal collection of Rochester, NY native Margaret Woodbury Strong, the museum opened to the public in 1982. Since then it has refined and increased its collections, which number more than 500,000 items, and expanded twice, in 1997 and 2006. The museum is home to the National Toy Hall of Fame, the National Center for the History of Electronic Games, and the Brian Sutton-Smith Library and Archives of Play and produces the American Journal of Play.
Known originally as the Margaret Woodbury Strong Museum and later simply as the Strong Museum, it became the Strong National Museum of Play in 2006, after completing renovations and an expansion that nearly doubled its size to 282,000 square feet. It is the only collections-based museum anywhere devoted solely to the study of play, and although it is a history museum, it has the interactive characteristics of a children’s museum making it the second largest museum of that type in the United States. The museum includes exhibits that interpret the key elements of play, as well as allow guests to explore the worlds of Sesame Street, the Berenstain Bears, Reading Adventureland, and the Dancing Wings Butterfly Garden.
Strong National Museum of Play acquired the National Toy Hall of Fame from A. C. Gilbert's Discovery Village in Salem, Oregon, in 2002. The National Toy Hall of Fame recognizes toys that have inspired creative play and enjoyed popularity over a sustained period. The Hall inducts two to four additional toys each year and exhibits examples of all inductees in an interactive setting.
The museum launched the interdisciplinary American Journal of Play in July 2008. The Journal is a forum for discussing the history, culture, and psychology of play and aims to increase awareness and understanding of the role of play in learning and human development and the ways in which play illuminates cultural history. The Journal is published quarterly through the University of Illinois Press.
The museum established the National Center for the History of Electronic Games (NCHEG) in March 2008. The museum's collection of over 10,000 video game consoles and titles, amassed since the museum opened in 1982 but only rarely used, will be available for academic research and occasional use in other exhibits.
Each costs one dollar per ride.
The expansion adds a food court to the museum, with Pizza Hut Express, Taco Bell Express, and Subway joining the existing "Louie's Sweet Shoppe" ice cream parlor. The museum also houses local chain restaurant Bill Gray's inside an old-fashioned trailer-style diner once known as the Skyliner Diner; the diner building is actually inside the lobby, next to the carousel.
There are now two gift shops, with the one nearest the Butterfly Garden focusing on butterfly-related merchandise.
