As the world’s largest collection of historical materials relating to play and one of the largest history museums in the U.S., The Strong will bring you back to your childhood and make you feel like a kid again.
A toy and doll collector, Margaret Woodbury Strong founded the museum as the Margaret Woodbury Strong Museum of Fascination a year before her death in 1969. She donated her estate to help support the museum and 13 years later it opened in a new building on 13.5 acres in downtown Rochester. Today, the museum offers 285,000 square feet and consists of the International Center for the History of Electronic Games, the National Toy Hall of Fame, the World Video Game Hall of Fame, the Brian Sutton-Smith Library and Archives of Play, the Woodbury School, and the American Journal of Play.
The Strong can accommodate groups from 25 to 250 and offers boardrooms, lounges, a theater, atrium and the exhibit space itself. Shane Rhinewald, director of public relations for The Strong, says groups have done scavenger hunts through the exhibits and had competitions in the classic arcade. Much of the museum is hands-on and interactive, making it a unique and memorable setting for any type of teambuilding, meeting or conference.
In mid-September, the $4 million, state-of-the-art Toys Hall of Fame exhibit opened, focusing on classic toys while also recognizing those who designed, made and sold them, such as Walt Disney, George Lucas, Jim Henson and LEGO. The high-tech exhibit features five themed areas—imagine, create, build, move, and compete—where guests interact with the toys from past generations. For example, one can pose in front of an oversized Etch a Sketch for a virtual portrait, or use cranks, pulleys and cords to interact with a 20-foot-tall kinetic toy sculpture made up of building blocks and balls. The new exhibit is also available for groups both as breakouts from meetings or for private events after-hours.