Paul S. Russell, MD Museum of Medical History and Innovation

The museum was built through philanthropic gifts to MGH in celebration of the hospital’s bicentennial celebration in 2011. The Massachusetts General Physicians Organization, clinical departments including Patient Care Services, and many individual staff members provided most of the funding to create the facility. The building accommodates two floors of exhibition galleries (3,735 sf) with a roof garden on the fourth level overlooking Cambridge Street. The ground floor gallery provides space for the museum’s main exhibits, which establish central themes that help tell the story of history and innovation at MGH. The height and massing of the building is designed to architecturally smooth the transition from the lower commercial frontage on Cambridge Street to the larger volumes of the hospital buildings behind. At street level the museum’s continuous windows allow passersby to see into the exhibits in the ground-floor gallery. An oriel window on the second floor is a modern interpretation of the bay windows of Boston’s 19th-century buildings. The purpose of the oriel window is to animate the façade, to create a beacon visible from up and down the adjacent sidewalk. It also gives the museum visitor a privileged position from which to view the street and the city.