The museum is located on Clayallee, an arterial road named after General Lucius D. Clay (1898–1978), in the Dahlem quarter of the southwestern Steglitz-Zehlendorf borough. Until German reunification in 1990, the area was located in the American sector of postwar West Berlin. The buildings near the US Army headquarters then housed an American movie theater, called "Outpost", and the Nicholson Memorial Library. The museum was inaugurated in 1998, on the fiftieth anniversary of the Berlin airlift, in the presence of Chancellor Helmut Kohl. Entrance is free.