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Kidcity children's museum of Middletown recently opened a new room that evokes a piazza in Melilli, Sicily.
Kidcity children's museum of Middletown recently opened a new room that evokes a piazza in Melilli, Sicily, with details that include a cafe, where the scent of coffee fills the air; a faux marble fountain of dolphins, a Vespa towing a little Vecchito's Italian Ice cart and more. The cozy room, lit as if it were the late afternoon in the plaza, evokes memories of the old country for adults and a sense of magic for kids, according to founder Jennifer Alexander. Parents and grandparents who emigrated to Middletown, Melilli's sister city, passed down stories to their relatives of strolling the city in the evening after work, a common pastime in Italy. The museum is located at 128 Washington St.
Kidcity children's museum of Middletown recently opened a new room that evokes a piazza in Melilli, Sicily. The cozy room, lit as if it were the late afternoon in the plaza, evokes memories of the old country for adults and a sense of magic for kids, according to founder Jennifer Alexander. Parents and grandparents who emigrated to Middletown, Melilli's sister city, passed down stories to their relatives of strolling the city in the evening after work, a common pastime in Italy.
Kidcity children's museum of Middletown recently opened a new room that evokes a piazza in Melilli, Sicily.
Kidcity children's museum of Middletown recently opened a new room that evokes a piazza in Melilli, Sicily.
Kidcity children's museum of Middletown recently opened a new room that evokes a piazza in Melilli, Sicily, with details that include a cafe, where the scent of coffee fills the air; a faux marble fountain of dolphins, Vespa towing a little Vecchito's Italian Ice cart and more. Here, brother and sister Ezra, 2, and Charlie, 3, enjoy the cafe play area Monday.
Kidcity children's museum of Middletown recently opened a new room that evokes a piazza in Melilli, Sicily. The cozy room, lit as if it were the late afternoon in the plaza, evokes memories of the old country for adults and a sense of magic for kids, according to founder Jennifer Alexander. Parents and grandparents who emigrated to Middletown, Melilli's sister city, passed down stories to their relatives of strolling the city in the evening after work, a common pastime in Italy.
Kidcity children's museum of Middletown recently opened a new room that evokes a piazza in Melilli, Sicily, with details that include a faux marble fountain of dolphins.
Kidcity children's museum of Middletown recently opened a new room that evokes a piazza in Melilli, Sicily, with details that include a faux marble fountain of dolphins.
Kidcity children's museum of Middletown recently opened a new room that evokes a piazza in Melilli, Sicily, with details that include a faux marble fountain of dolphins.
Kidcity children's museum of Middletown recently opened a new room that evokes a piazza in Melilli, Sicily.
MIDDLETOWN — A tiny, darkened hallway tucked away at Kidcity children’s museum leads to a cozy, wondrous room that evokes a piazza in Melilli, Sicily, just before dusk.
A faux marble fountain of dolphins leaping high into the air seem frozen in time as the smell of coffee wafts from a cafe in the corner, and royal green handkerchiefs, scattered on the stone-like floor, are pushed into tiny portals by little hands.
The scarves burst out of the top of the sculpture, lending a sense of magic to the play area. “They come out, and the kids find them, collect them, and the grownups sit as they feed the fountain,” Founder and Creative Director Jennifer Alexander explained.
Alexander's team includes artists Matt Niland and Scott Kessel, who have been working together for 17 of the 24 years the 128 Washington St. facility has been open.
Melilli, Middletown’s sister city, is depicted in the details: a line of I Nuri dressed in red and white, running up the hill to St. Sebastian Church, about to stream inside to honor their patron saint.
For the designers, the room brought up memories of when those from Melilli came to the city 100 years ago, Alexander said. “The people who lived there live here now have these stories and associations they heard from their grandparents.
“They’re the kind of stories their children tell about the place that was left,” she added.
The room, located on the second floor of the museum, is dimly lit on purpose to look like dusk, she explained.
The lighting, which mimics the sunset, conveys “that feeling of the evening stroll,” and offers a sense of quiet and peace that encourages visitors to sit and spend some time.
It's "a neighborhood space and local park where neighbors might come at the end of the day,” Alexander said.
Middletown has a “sister city” relationship with Melilli. Part of the Kidcity building formerly belonged to St. Sebastian’s Church, a replica of the church in Melilli. The building was moved to the nearby Kidcity property 25 years ago, Alexander said.
Next to the white dolphins are sculpted fish, and, when children place the handkerchiefs scattered throughout the room in the fishes’ mouths, air pumps them through pipes to shoot out of the dolphins mouths.
There is also a replica of an Italian scooter, a Vespa, which children can "ride."
Evette McKinley from Brooklyn, Conn., who was visiting the museum for a second time with her two grandchildren, Rowan, 7, and Alex, 3, said the pair loved the new exhibit.
“Especially the 3-year-old, he’s pretty enthralled with it,” McKinley said, as Alex excitedly stuffed handkerchiefs inside the fish.
Despite challenges that come with building the exhibits, “It is awesome to step back and see the kids playing on something we built together as a team. It makes the difficult parts worthwhile,” Niland said.
Alexander said the museum is also about strengthening relationships between children and their parents.
“Kids don’t need a museum to play,” Alexander said. “Kids can play with an empty box. The difference between an empty box and our museum is the attention of a significant grown-up who knows that kid inside and out.”
When Alexander visited the city, one of her two visits to Melilli, she recorded the sounds of people chatting, a sound that's piped into the room.
Back home, she approached local business people, including Marisa Bramato, who is from the general area of Melilli. When children peer through the blinds of a tiny shutter, they see a baker making fresh cannoli in a kitchen.
When kids press a doorbell, they hear her voice: “'We’re closed. What’s wrong with you? You keep pushing the bell,'” Alexander mimicked.
At the entrance, painted on the walls are the names of residents, including Sebastiano Santostefano, uncle of the city’s former fire marshal Al Santostefano, who lived on Ferry Street and wrote books about working on the tobacco farm
It also honors Marco Rafalà, author of “How Fires End.”
“He wrote about growing up in the North End, and being a cool teenager who would crash Wesleyan parties, coming from this old Sicilian family, and how the backyards are all intertwined with grapevines,” Alexander said.
“He’s coming from that world, and he’s in this new world and not understanding generations of relationships between the families and his neighborhood that had come over from Melilli,” she added.
It was important to incorporate the different personalities of the children who visit, Alexander said. “We have a lot of theater craft, and a lot of thinking of introverts and extroverts, and how a quieter toddler might want to play over here. They might not want to run around there where there are scarves."
When children enter the room, they don’t know what it’s about at first, Alexander said. “They slowly start to figure it out, gives them the privilege of discovering how to use the room. However they experience it is fine: If it brings up an Italian association with them, maybe it’s a village, maybe it’s something else."
Their parents, grandparents and other relatives enjoy the experience as well, she said.
“When you live with a sense of loss, and when you’re generations removed from it, it was meant to be a little bit of a healing to say that it’s OK to think that beauty is important,” Alexander said.
The museum is open by reservation only by reserving time on the website at kidcitymuseum.com. Tickets are $10. Admission with an EBT/SNAP card is $3 per person.
Cassandra Day is an award-winning multimedia journalist and resident of the North End of Middletown who has been reporting nearly every facet of the city for over two decades.