Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center

The story

The Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center is an annex of the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum located at Dulles International Airport in Chantilly, Virginia, which houses much of the museum's collection of aircraft, spacecraft, and rockets, which are too large to be displayed at the main facility on the National Mall. The large hangar contains some of the most iconic artifacts in aviation history, including the Space Shuttle Discovery, the Enola Gay, and the Boeing 367-80, as well as examples of the SR-71 Blackbird and Concorde. The 760,000-square-foot (71,000 m2; 17-acre; 7.1 ha) facility was made possible by a $65 million donation in October 1999 to the Smithsonian Institution by Steven F. Udvar-Házy, an immigrant from Hungary and co-founder of the International Lease Finance Corporation, an aircraft leasing corporation. Prior to the facility's opening in 2003, much of the museum's collection had been inaccessible to the public, as its size vastly outstripped the space available to the museum on the National Mall. Most of the collection had been stored out of sight at the museum's conservation shop, the Paul E. Garber Preservation, Restoration, and Storage Facility in Silver Hill, Maryland. After the Udvar-Hazy Center made much of the collection available to the public in 2003, the restoration and conservation facilities were moved to the facility in 2010 with the construction of an additional wing of the museum funded by Airbus. The restoration facility includes observation windows, allowing the public to view some of the preservation work. The Udvar-Hazy Center receives over 1.2 million visitors annually, as of 2023. The Udvar-Hazy Center is directly attached to the Dulles International Airport runways via a private taxiway, allowing some accessions to be flown directly to the facility rather than requiring disassembly and ground transport. The airport's large runways can accommodate any size of commercial or military aircraft. The facility also hosts the Airbus IMAX Theater, a single-screen 4K laser cinema which projects onto the largest IMAX screen in the region. It plays both box-office releases and special screenings.

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Wikidata Q1055100, referenced by the OpenStreetMap record.

What to expect

Operated by

Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum

Fee

No

Step-free access

Yes

Official site

How to reach it

Named places within 25 miles

Summits around it

The highest named summits within 24.3 miles of Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center. Elevation from each summit’s own record; bearing measured between the two coordinates.

When to go

Light through the year

Local time (America/New_York).

Climate normals

Months averaging 50–80 °F: Apr–Oct.

1991–2020 U.S. Climate Normals, NOAA NCEI — Washington Dulles Intl AP, 2 mi away.

Where this comes from

OpenStreetMap element way/1009206075