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NEW YORK -- Where once The New York Times' presses rolled beside iconic Broadway sites like Sardi's restaurant and across the street from Shubert Alley, a place of exploration and wonder has emerged.
Discovery Times Square Exposition, 44th Street between Seventh and Eighth avenues, opened last year with exhibitions of Titanic artifacts (the real thing, not the film) and "Leonardo da Vinci's Workshop," a peek into the mastermind's world, with scale models of his inventions and touch screens that allow viewers to zoom in on famous works like "The Last Supper" and other digital interaction.
You enter the exposition through a dark, gray ticketing space, then head downstairs into the former printing-press area, where you are ushered into a room with benches that face the opposite wall. A film flickers on, depicting da Vinci's life and times, with at least some footage from the 2003 film "Leonardo," starring Mark Rylance as the artist and inventor.
Where: Discovery Times Square Exposition, 44th Street, New York.
When: Runs without break through March 14. Entry is timed to the showing of the film on the half-hour, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. weekdays and Sunday and 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Saturday.
Tickets: $21.23 ($19.50 plus tax); $20.14 for 65 and over, and $19.05 for children 4-12.
Information: www.discoverytsx.com or 1-866-9TSXNYC (1-866-987-9692). Discovery TSX also features a cafe and stores related to the exhibitions and The New York Times Store.
The film ends and the wall moves aside like something out of Disneyland to reveal a studio like the one da Vinci might have used in the late 15th, early 16th century.
A full-scale model of a mechanical lion is one of the first things a visitor sees in the moody lighting. It's a reminder that da Vinci, while working on inventions that proved to be precursors of airplanes and automobiles, also was at the mercy of his royal benefactors, for whom he created wondrous toys and party spectacles that have been lost to the centuries.
Other scale models include a self-propelled cart, helicopter and robot knight. Touch screens translate more than 500 sketches from his notebooks into 3-D models and allow activities like "building" a model by dragging pieces into their precise places to form a whole.
Midday Friday, Nov. 20, the day "Leonardo's Workshop" opened, there were only 12 other people in the space, including a film crew of three with "Discovery Channel" stitched on their shirts. That sparse crowd allowed visitors time to spend with the artist and the individual wonders of his world.
Taking over Discovery TSX in April: Artifacts from King Tut's tomb, returning to New York City for the first time in more than 30 years.
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