Our two-year-old Leo B. is obsessed with fire trucks, so we decided to take him to the NYC Fire…read moreMuseum last month while we were visiting New York. It was less exciting than I'd hoped--I guess I'd expected to see, I don't know, like one fire truck that looks like the ones in his books--but it was still a worthwhile stop, and he enjoyed himself quite a bit.
The museum is small, housed in an old fire station in Hudson Square, with exhibits spread out across a couple of floors. You enter and exit through the gift shop, which is also where you purchase tickets. The guy at the register was very nice, and we bought three adult tickets (mom, dad, grandma) at $10 apiece, all so the little one, whose ticket was "free," could enjoy fifteen minutes roaming among the firefighting artifacts. I think we were the only visitors the entire time we were there.
We saw a handful of old fire engines spread out between the two floors, and these were pretty cool, and Leo recognized them as fire trucks of sorts and enjoyed looking at and discussing their big wheels. He was less interested in the smaller items, which would probably be intriguing to slightly older kids. We also kept him out of the 9/11 memorial room, which seemed less designed for boisterous toddlers than the rest of the place, but which we adults appreciated.
I honestly think our kid's favorite part of the museum might have been the gift shop, where I discovered that my son understands the concept of buying things and taking them home. He wanted every fucking variant on a fire truck toy--squishy and plastic, small and large; ambulance, van, engine. We settled on a big fire truck with an extendable ladder, which is now one of his favorite toys. It was over $40 and one of the stickers started peeling off pretty immediately, but I do think it's reasonably solid quality. We bought the same one for a friend's two-year-old, as well as a soft toy for his baby sister, both of which went over well. We also got an FDNY T-shirt for Leo, so the museum made a decent amount of money off of us.
I'm guessing we didn't see all there was to see, but as our two-year-old wasn't clamoring to learn about the fire department's history, I think we did things right. We had a pleasant visit at the NYC Fire Museum and would recommend it if you or your small ones are fascinated by firefighting.