Melanie Bennett
The first question often asked when people hear about the new gallery dedicated to women's sports opening in May is: why didn't anyone think of this before? Behind the scenes the Women's Sports Foundation has involved dozens of individuals in working on this project for the past 20 years. Strangely enough, the beginning of the story starts not in New York, the new home to the Billie Jean King International Women's Sports Center, but across the country in Sacramento, Calif.
Eva Auchincloss, the first Women's Sports Foundation Executive Director, spearheaded the first incarnation of a women's sports museum plan in 1987, after her tenure at the Women's Sports Foundation. Anne Rudin, the mayor of Sacramento, Calif., offered to donate Sacramento land for the creation of the “Women's Sports Foundation International Women's Sports Hall of Fame and interactive Sports Science Center.” Planning for this project was halted in 1990 due to a lack of funding.
Over the next few years the Women's Sports Foundation considered several different homes for the International Women's Sports Hall of Fame, including Philadelphia, Atlanta and Norfolk, Va. None of these possibilities went far past the conceptual stage.
With the move of the Women's Sports Foundation to Nassau County in the early 1990s came a new possibility. Nassau County offered to create a building attached to the Women's Sports Foundation offices in Eisenhower Park to feature the International Women's Sports Hall of Fame. The Hall of Fame was to be an educational center on the accomplishments of the inductees that would have a dynamic quality, relying on video presentations and changing exhibits, opening in 1996. This project morphed into one to create the “International Center for Women's Sports and Fitness,” a museum dedicated to women in sport housed in Eisenhower Park, in 1995.
As the Foundation got into the process of creating the actual plans for the museum, it was discovered to be a much longer-term project than originally anticipated. A first set of plans created in 1998 were discarded. Final plans for the building, exhibits and staffing were created in 2003. One challenge the project faced was a change in venue. Nassau County offered to house the museum in the County's Museum Row, rather than in Eisenhower Park, in 2002. The location of several other museums in the vicinity, including the Children's Museum and Aviation Museum, made this a desirable option. However a specific location was never settled on, ending discussions.
In 2003 correspondence began between the Women's Sports Foundation and a group building the National Sports Museum. At first the goal of this relationship was to create a home for the International Women's Sports Hall of Fame within the National Sports Museum, housed in New York City. Over time the idea expanded to the inclusion of a full-fledged gallery created by the Women's Sports Foundation and devoted to women in sport, the Billie Jean King International Women's Sports Center. By 2007 solid plans were crafted for the size, scope and features of the gallery, and the name of the museum changed to the Sports Museum of America. The fruition of the past two decades' work will come with the opening of the Sports Museum of America in May of 2008.
The Women's Sports Foundation Board and staff would like to express their gratitude and thanks to the many donors and people who persevered with their gifts of time, money and energy to make this historic property of the organization come to fruition.