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Through authentic and unique learning experiences, the DiMenna Children’s History Museum invites multi-generational families to meaningfully connect with American’s past, present and future. The exhibits, collections, programs, and staff challenge visitors to grow up with history.

Targeted for children ages 8–13, the DiMenna Children’s History Museum focuses on the life stories of a diverse selection of youngsters who lived in New York City from the late seventeenth through the twentieth centuries. Featured in individual pavilions are Cornelia van Varick (ca. 1692–1734), the daughter of the Dutch merchant Margrieta van Varick; Alexander Hamilton (1757–1804), the teenaged West Indian immigrant who became the first U.S. Secretary of the Treasury; James McCune Smith (1813–1865), the African Free School student and first African American medical doctor; Esteban Bellán (1849–1932), the Cuban teenager and first Latin American to play baseball in the U. S.; the children who rode the orphan trains from New York City to rural areas in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; and the newsboys and girls who sold newspapers on the city streets in the twentieth century.

Get to know these historical figures better! Each character pavilion combines objects, games, and information that help tell the story of each person's childhood and adulthood.