Cradle of Aviation Museum

75 air and spacecraft in eight galleries chronicling over 100 years of aerospace history await you in the Donald Everett Axinn Air & Space Museum Hall.

Explore over 150,000 square feet featuring 75 air and spacecraft from a hot air balloon to an actual Apollo Lunar Module and learn about Long Island's role and why we are called the Cradle of Aviation. Our eight exhibit galleries are in chronological order and throughout the museum our volunteer docents are there to share their aerospace experience. There are over 30 hands-on exhibits, a half dozen cockpits to climb into and many short films through-out the exhibits.

The Cradle of Aviation Museum is an aviation and spaceflight museum located in East Garden City, New York on Long Island to commemorate Long Island's part in the history of aviation. It is located on land once part of Mitchel Air Force Base which, together with nearby Roosevelt Field and other airfields on the Hempstead Plains, was the site of many historic flights. In fact, so many seminal flights occurred in the area, that by the mid-1920s the cluster of airfields was already dubbed the "Cradle of Aviation", the origin of the museum's name. The museum originally opened with just a handful of aircraft in the un-restored hangars in 1980. A major renovation and expansion program in the late 1990s allowed the museum to re-open in a state-of-the-art facility in 2002. Additional expansion plans are currently under development.