Here's another interesting nugget: The Queens Children's Museum, founded in Jackson Heights in the 1930s. Besides this one article, there are few other references to this museum in the New York Times archive... the latest appears to be in 1939. There's also a brief reference to a museum by the same name in Forest Hills in the 1950s... don't know if they're one and the same.
http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F00816F73F5A157A93C2A8178AD85F438385F9The New York Times
CHILD'S MUSEUM THRIVES IN QUEENS; 700 Children of the Borough Flock to Institution Set Up in Jackson Heights.
By HELEN DALLAS
January 10, 1937,
A new link in the chain of children's museums established throughout the world in the last thirty years has been added in Greater New York. It is the Children's Museum of Queens, situated in Jackson Heights but already drawing young habitues from all parts of the borough.
Like other children's museums, it is a cross between class time and play time for the youngsters, who come in after school hours to attend its art and science courses....
Unlike other children's museums, the Queens institution is one in which "mothers" have played a major part. Late in 1935 the Parents Association of Public School 69 in Queens asked Miss Anna Billings Gallup of the Brooklyn Children's Museum, a pioneer in the movement, to lecture to them.
Then there were committee sessions and visits to the Children's Museum of Brooklyn. Public-spirited citizens were called upon for donations; organizations were solicited for charter membership fees; and finally last April the doors of two small stores, at 79-09, 79-11 Thirty-seventh Avenue, were opened to admit the first children to the officially chartered Children's Museum of Queens....