Bruce Springsteen’s new center in New Jersey is a jewel box monument to his music

From the wood boardwalk that leads to its front doors to the weathered steel of its facade to the rough-hewn timber beams inside, there’s an unmistakable postindustrial feel to the new Bruce Springsteen Center for American Music. Opening to the public on June 13, the center is a space built to house Springsteen’s archives and exhibitions on his life and music, but also to tell the broader story of American music. It’s also a tribute to the working-class American environment so central to Springsteen’s music and life. [Photo: Alex Ferrec/©CookFox Architects] Naturally, the center is on the New Jersey shore near his hometown. It is located in West Long Branch on the campus of Monmouth University, where Springsteen played many of his earliest shows. It also sits just four blocks from where The Boss wrote his 1975 masterpiece “Born to Run.” As the center’s name suggests, it’s not a museum solely about Bruce Springsteen—a distinction made at the behest of the ever-humble musician himself. The idea for the center came from Bob Santelli, a longtime Rolling Stone journalist who was among the founding curators of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, which opened in 1995, and several other music-related museums in the three decades since. In Springsteen’s music he saw an opportunity to explore a deep connection between the art and the place it’s from. [Photo: Alex Ferrec/©CookFox Architects] More than a tribute to a superstar Santelli, who has been writing about Springsteen since 1973, reached out to him to ask if he’d be interested in creating a museum. “This was an opportunity to make sure that Bruce’s legacy is preserved and celebrated in the state that he’s synonymous with,” Santelli says. Springsteen was not keen on the idea of making a museum all about himself. “He said, my feeling is that I’m a part of the American music story. I’m a chapter of it.” So Santelli re