The new Bruce Springsteen Center for American Music opens June 7 at Monmouth University. Rendering: Courtesy of the BSCAM/COOKFOX Architects
At first glance, the striking new $50 million, 30,000-square-foot Bruce Springsteen Center for American Music, its immense glass windows glinting on a corner of Monmouth University’s West Long Branch campus, might not immediately conjure its namesake New Jerseyan.
Is it a match for the onstage presence of a world-class rocker-slash-preacher who can casually hold any roaring stadium of 50,000 fans in the palm of his hand? Sure. Yet to a passing motorist, it might less readily evoke the other Springsteens: the shy singer-songwriter from Freehold, who wrote in his memoir of feeling “barely visible” most of his young life; who, just a few years ago, politely declined an offer for a Parkway rest stop in his name; and who, back in 1975, living mere minutes down the road and on the cusp of finishing Born to Run, mailed a handwritten apology to his “landlordess” for the late rent on his blink-and-you’ll-miss-it bungalow.
But on a late-winter hard-hat tour of the active construction site, about 100 days out from the center’s historic opening on June 7, Melissa Ziobro, director of curatorial affairs, brings the sprawling exterior down to earth and its carefully chosen details into sharp focus.
The building’s main entranceway is, fittingly, a boardwalk. Rendering: Courtesy of the BSCAM/COOKFOX Architects
The building’s main entranceway, partially hidden from street traffic, is—what else?—a boardwalk, modeled after the Boss-haunted landmark in Asbury Park, roughly five miles south. The architects “wanted to use every square inch of the property to do some type of thoughtful storytelling,” Ziobro says, motioning to the area where a meadow of indigenous grasses will, come spring, replace the snow-dotted dirt. The facade of the building, she explains, is a nod to industrial New Jersey. It’s made of steel, site project manager Timothy Blake later adds, that’s been rusted and weathered “to a point where it builds this permanent patina.”
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[EXCLUSIVE: Bruce Springsteen opens up about his new Center for American Music. Click here to read.]
Bruce wrote much of his 1975 Born to Run album in West Long Branch, minutes away from the new center. Photo: Courtesy of the BSCAM/Eric Meola
Like its eponymous artist, the Springsteen Center carries a long and storied past. It began in 2001 as a fan-based collection of donated memorabilia and grew to thousands of pieces, eventually coming to Monmouth in 2011, where it was housed in a tiny Cape Cod cottage on campus and nurtured by director Eileen Chapman, whose tenure as caretaker was the longest in its history. Named Springsteen’s official archive in 2017, the house had a distinctly informal spirit. Guests often dropped by unannounced to take a tour and peruse ephemera (albeit under Chapman’s watchful eye, and not without gloves). When out-of-towners on Springsteen pilgrimages inquired about other local landmarks—say, the Stone Pony, or rock photographer Danny Clinch’s gallery—she’d sometimes drive them there herself in her silver Ford Explorer. Due to a never-ending stream of donations, space became so scarce that even the bathroom was utilized for storage, with a mountain of boxes piled high in the tub.
Director Eileen Chapman at the Springsteen Center’s previous home, an overflowing cottage on Monmouth’s campus. Photo: Courtesy of the BSCAM
Whatever the center may lose in scrappy charm as it evolves into a major institution, it will gain many times over in scope and scale across its exhibitions, public programming, education initiatives and research archives. “We made it very accessible for people—and we’ll continue to do that, but in a much different way,” says Chapman, who, along with founding executive director Bob Santelli, accompanied Springsteen on his very first hard-hat tour of the building. His reaction: “My mind is officially blown.”
From left: director Eileen Chapman, Springsteen, executive director Bob Santelli, Monmouth president Patrick Leahy and curatorial affairs director Melissa Ziobro at the Springsteen Center’s building site. Photo: Courtesy of the BSCAM
The Springsteen Center in this newly expanded form, which officially broke ground in fall 2024, is helmed by Santelli, a music historian, journalist, educator and veteran music-museum curator whose long résumé includes the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland, the Woody Guthrie Center in Tulsa, and music education programs at the White House.
“I always dreamt that there should be a major Smithsonian museum on American music,” Santelli says. “We have them on art; we have them on history and science. Music is our most important cultural resource, and…we have nothing?! I said that until, in essence, Washington gets its act together, we’ll house the story of American music, and we’ll do it in a very 21st-century way, with programs, traveling exhibitions, and the collection of American music stories to use for educational purposes.”
The 2019 “Springsteen: His Hometown” exhibit in Freehold began as a class project at Monmouth University. Photos: Courtesy of the BSCAM
Those traveling exhibitions began in 2019 with “Springsteen: His Hometown,” a collaboration with the Monmouth County Historical Association in Springsteen’s hometown of Freehold; curator Ziobro, also the university’s director of public history, had started it as a project in her museums and archives management class. Currently, a Born to Run exhibit is on view in Passaic County, and a national traveling exhibit, “Music America: Iconic Objects From America’s Music History” (which launched in 2024, ahead of America’s semiquincentennial this year) recently relocated to Boston, where it will remain until August.
The center’s traveling exhibit, “Music America: Iconic Objects from America’s Music History,” is currently in Boston. Photo: Courtesy of the BSCAM
“We have been very active with public programs, and we will only accelerate once we open,” Santelli says. “So this is the staging ground—but America is our proving ground.”
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More than a decade ago, while serving as founding executive director of the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles, Santelli received a call from Chapman about the fan-based collection, which had outgrown its home at the Asbury Park library and was “not in good shape,” he remembers. “I worked for a museum. I knew what a collection is and how it should be handled, and that wasn’t happening. Fans had done an amazing job assembling this. It felt sinful to let this thing grow mold.” Monmouth’s library, however, declined to take it.
“So I pulled rank and went to the president,” recalls Santelli, a distinguished alum and former faculty member who, by that time, had extensively covered the E Street Band as a journalist and edited Springsteen’s 1998 book, Songs. “I said, ‘I have to tell you: Library of Congress, Smithsonian, they’re calling me….They want me to introduce them to Bruce Springsteen…and I’ll be damned if I’m the guy who—New Jersey’s favorite son, his legacy is gonna move to Washington, D.C.? It needs to stay here!’”
A scrapbook kept by Marion Vinyard, a lifelong friend of Bruce’s whose husband, Tex, managed Bruce’s first real band, the Castiles. Photo: Courtesy of the collection of the BSCAM/Mark Krajnak
After the collection had been saved and moved into the small archive house on campus, Santelli began dreaming even bigger, envisioning a more consequential institution in Springsteen’s name taking shape at Monmouth.
He eventually pitched the idea to Springsteen’s longtime manager, Jon Landau, who he wasn’t sure would be on board. Landau’s reaction, to his surprise: “You’ve gotta tell Bruce.”
Santelli flew to Jersey and drove out to Springsteen’s home in Colts Neck. “I just remember Jon saying, ‘Okay, Bob, tell him!’” he says. So he started talking.
“He didn’t say anything,” Santelli recalls fondly. “And Bruce is relatively a quiet guy. I couldn’t tell whether he was thinking about what he was going to have for lunch, or [his] next song, or this,” he muses. “I just kept going, explaining, because I had this vision. And at the end, he said, in so many words, ‘Bob, I’m honored; I appreciate that—but I don’t want it to be [all] about me.’ He said something to the effect of, ‘I’m a chapter in this ongoing story of American music. If you could broaden it so that I’m part of it, but we tell a bigger story, I’d be more comfortable with that.’”
How about, Santelli suggested on the fly, the Bruce Springsteen Center for American Music? Bruce was quiet again, listening.
“And then he says, ‘Well, let’s go see where you want to put it,’” Santelli recalls. He mimics Landau’s jaw dropping. “I couldn’t believe it.”
He and Landau got in their respective cars, Springsteen hopped on his motorcycle, “and we have this little procession” to Monmouth, Santelli says. “I’m going, Holy crap—he’s serious!”
When they arrived on the campus, Santelli pointed out the spot where he’d imagined the building.
“That’ll do,” Springsteen said, and got back on his motorcycle. “Well, Bob,” Landau said, turning to Santelli, “get started!”
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Back at the construction site, our trio donning hard hats, safety glasses and neon-yellow vests, Ziobro points out the 240-seat, Dolby Atmos-certified theater where visitors will see a 20-minute documentary by Springsteen’s longtime filmmaker, Thom Zimny. The film will explore New Jersey as a musical “microcosm of America,” Springsteen’s vast American music influences; and how he has become the “poster boy” for American music, particularly in Europe, where “so many fans see him as the representation of this country, or what they want this country to be,” Santelli explains. The theater will also function as a performance space for events like the center’s annual American Music Honors. Springsteen’s longtime former sound team helped to make the space “absolutely perfect for live music,” Chapman says.
A 240-seat, Dolby Atmos-certified theater will double as a performance and event space. Rendering: Courtesy of the BSCAM/COOKFOX Architects
On the first floor, the American Music Gallery will examine our country’s music history from the Colonial period to the present, beginning with indigenous music that existed prior to European contact in what is now North America, Ziobro explains.
“Bruce himself said, ‘Look, I don’t want you to build a shrine to me. You can use my name, my story, my legacy as a springboard to tell broader stories about American life, history and culture,’” Ziobro says. “There’s something for everybody. We grab them with the music and use that as a prism through which to explore broader themes in American life: technology, activism, gender, race, class.” There are artifacts (costumes, instruments) and interactive elements (a song bar, a touchable U.S. map). Artists span from Bob Dylan to Beyoncé, Frank Sinatra to Sabrina Carpenter, and Woody Guthrie to Whitney Houston.
The Springsteen Center celebrates not just Bruce and the E Street Band but music across American history. Renderings: Courtesy of the BSCAM/C&G
Upstairs, the focus is on Bruce and the E Street Band. One room traces his life and career by the decade. Another, wallpapered with handwritten lyrics, spotlights his songwriting process. (“It’s like you stepped inside his notebook,” Ziobro says. Originals are on display behind glass, “so you can see the cross-outs, and how the lyrics morph with time.”)
Handwritten Springsteen lyrics will be on view at the center, like these from “Last Man Standing,” an emotional centerpiece of his 2023-24 concerts. Photo: Courtesy of the collection of the BSCAM/Mark Krajnak
Iconic artifacts include his distressed jeans and crumpled red hat from the Born in the U.S.A. cover, his leather jacket from the Born to Run cover, and the recorder he used to make Nebraska. In one space, guests can plop onto bleacher seating and take in curated footage of Springsteen’s live performances. In another, interactive instruments are accompanied by audio from band members: Steve Van Zandt when you pick up a guitar, Max Weinberg when you sit down at the drums.
Bruce with his sisters Pam (center) and Virginia. Photo: Courtesy of the collection of the BSCAM/Mark Krajnak
While there will be a modest admission fee for the exhibits, an archival suite will be open to the public by appointment. There, visitors can explore menus of curated, digitized archival content such as handwritten lyrics, oral histories and pages from Springsteen’s mother Adele’s lovingly kept scrapbooks. Larger groups and families can book listening booths; serious researchers will reserve time in a private room.
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Leading up to its grand opening on June 7, the center is producing four celebratory concerts. Two at Monmouth’s Pollak Theater will highlight local music (late May) and indigenous music (June 3). A set of shows on June 4 and 5, “Music America: The Songs That Shaped Us,” at the university’s OceanFirst Bank Center, will feature nearly two dozen artists, including Springsteen, Jon Bon Jovi, Kenny Chesney and Rosanne Cash.
Racing toward the finish line, Santelli’s team is “the little engine that could,” he says. He’s assured them: “There’s a light at the end of the tunnel, and it’s not a train.” Early one recent morning, Ziobro was sitting on the floor of Santelli’s office in sweats, trying to write a blurb “on the history of the intersection between race and music in America for 250 years in 150 words.” This is not, she laughs, a nine-to-five job. “It’s kind of all-consuming.” In Santelli’s temporary off-campus home, which doubles as a staging area, he wakes to a sea of priceless artifacts, including Springsteen’s old surfboard and a drum set from one of his early bands, Earth.
“It’s all very emotional,” Chapman says, her voice catching. “And I know [Bruce] is very pleased.”
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