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New York has no shortage of places to encounter American history, but the latest one comes with a pretty spectacular view.
A rare 1818 facsimile of the Declaration of Independence, printed on silk, is now on display on the 80th floor of the Empire State Building’s Observatory Experience. The artifact was unveiled this week and will stick around through October 4, giving visitors a limited window to see a seriously unusual piece of the country’s past on one of the city's most famous observation decks.
The silk document is believed to be one of only four or five surviving copies of the first facsimile to reproduce the signatures found on the engrossed Declaration of Independence. Its story dates back to the years following the War of 1812, when calligrapher Benjamin Owen Tyler created an elaborate copy of the founding document. Tyler set out to produce a facsimile that preserved not only the Declaration’s text but also its famous signatures and some very recognizable names apparently supported the project: his subscription book was signed by Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and John Quincy Adams, among others.
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More than two centuries later, one of those silk copies has landed 80 floors above Midtown Manhattan. The temporary exhibition is timed to the United States’ 250th anniversary celebrations and, importantly, you won’t need to buy a separate museum ticket to see it: access to the display is included with regular Observatory admission.
The Empire State Building's revamped Observatory Experience includes an interactive museum spread across nine galleries, covering everything from the skyscraper’s construction to its abundant pop-culture cameos, before visitors head up to the open-air 86th-floor observatory or the enclosed 102nd-floor deck. The Declaration facsimile joins that experience on the 80th floor.
So if you’re headed up the Empire State Building between now and October 4, spend a little extra time on the 80th floor. The skyline has been there for a while but one of only a handful of silk copies of an early Declaration of Independence facsimile decidedly has not.