Swedish Cottage Marionette Theatre

The story

A Swedish model schoolhouse built for an 1876 Philadelphia exposition ended up, by Frederick Law Olmsted's design, in Central Park. Olmsted spotted it among the Centennial Exposition exhibits and moved it to the park the following year. By 1947 it housed a marionette troupe that traveled the city performing in playgrounds and school auditoriums. A permanent theater was built inside in 1973, and since then hundreds of thousands of children and families from around the world have seen original productions here. Today the CityParks PuppetMobile, the oldest continually operating company of its kind in the country, carries free puppet shows into neighborhood parks and schools across New York City.