If you've walked past Broadway and Columbus lately and found the Beat Museum dark, you haven't missed a farewell. The museum posted on Nov. 25, 2025, that it was closing temporarily while its building undergoes an earthquake retrofit.
When it will reopen
"Construction work continues, but rest assured, we'll be back," the museum says on its website. "We anticipate reopening sometime in 2027." No specific date has been posted.
Where to go in the meantime
The museum is pointing visitors to its Counterculture Museum on the corner of Haight and Ashbury, open Wednesday through Sunday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Earlier updates on the museum's site described the new space as including a bookstore and gift shop. The museum has also brought back its Covid-era auctions of Beat Generation collectibles, which started in early October on its Facebook page.
A museum that started on the road
The Beat Museum began in Monterey in 2003, when founders Jerry and Estelle Cimino put Jerry's personal collection of Beat memorabilia on display. In 2004 and 2005, Cimino and John Allen Cassady, son of Neal Cassady, took the "Beat Museum on Wheels" across the country in an Airstream motorhome. The museum moved to North Beach in 2006, first to a temporary space on Grant Avenue and then to 540 Broadway, across the street from City Lights Bookstore.
That building was once the Swiss American Hotel. It is also where comedian Lenny Bruce fell from a window and was injured.
What's in the collection
The collection includes thousands of pieces of memorabilia, hundreds of photographs and a large book selection. Highlights have included Allen Ginsberg's typewriter, Jack Kerouac's tweed jacket, the referee shirt Neal Cassady wore in Ken Kesey's circle, and material from the 1957 "Howl" obscenity trial. Director Walter Salles donated the 1949 Hudson from his 2012 film "On the Road," on the condition that it never be cleaned.