American Museum of Natural History Research Library
author: Default Agency

American Museum of Natural History
event: 1869
The American Museum of Natural History is one of the world’s preeminent scientific and cultural institutions. Since its founding in 1869, the Museum has advanced its global mission to discover, interpret, and disseminate information about human cultures, the natural world, and the universe through a wide-ranging program of scientific research, education, and exhibition. The Museum is renowned for its exhibitions and scientific collections, which serve as a field guide to the entire planet and present a panorama of the world's cultures.
1869Albert Smith Bickmore, one-time student of Harvard zoologist Louis Agassiz, is successful in his proposal to create a natural history museum in New York City, winning the support of William E. Dodge, Jr., Theodore Roosevelt, Sr., Joseph Choate, and J. Pierpont Morgan. The Governor of New York, John Thompson Hoffman, signs the Act of Incorporation officially creating the American Museum of Natural History on April 6. John David Wolfe becomes President of the Museum the same year.
1871A series of exhibits of the Museum's collection goes on view for the first time in the Central Park Arsenal, the Museum's original home on the eastern side of Central Park.
1872Robert L. Stuart becomes President of the Museum. The Museum quickly outgrows the Arsenal and secures Manhattan Square, a block of land across the street from Central Park, between West 77th and 81st Streets, to build a bigger facility. Although funds are only available for the construction of a relatively modest building, architects Calvert Vaux and J. Wrey Mould prepare a monumental plan for the entire Manhattan Square site, to include an enormous five-story square with a Greek cross in the middle that would create four enclosed courts with a central octagonal crossing, covered with a dome.
1874The cornerstone for the Museum's first building at 77th Street is laid by U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant.
1877The first building opens with U.S. President Rutherford B. Hayes presiding at a public ceremony.
1881New Museum President Morris K. Jesup launches the Museum into a golden age of exploration that lasts from 1880 to 1930. During this time, the Museum is involved with expeditions that discover the North Pole; explore unmapped areas of Siberia; traverse Outer Mongolia and the great Gobi; and penetrate the densest jungles of the Congo, taking Museum representatives to every continent on the globe.
1895President Jesup hires Franz Boas to be the assistant curator in the Department of Ethnology.
1896The Hall of Northwest Coast Indians opens on the first floor.
1906Boas leaves his position at the Museum and begins teaching at Columbia University. One of his students is Margaret Mead, the scientist, explorer, writer, and teacher who will work in the Department of Anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History from 1926 until her death in 1978. A pioneer, she brings the serious work of anthropology into the public consciousness.
1908Museum President Morris K. Jesup dies. Henry Fairfield Osborn becomes President. Osborn is the first Museum president trained as a scientist.
1913Carl Akeley, a pioneer in the creation of lifelike mammal dioramas, writes to Osborn offering to devote five years to the creation of an African Mammals Hall at the Museum. Osborn agrees.
1926The Museum receives an extensive gift of mammals from the Indian subcontinent, the result of an expedition led by Arthur S. Vernay and Colonel J. C. Faunthorpe. Work soon begins on designing a fitting environment for these specimens, which will be mounted according to Akeley’s technique and displayed in dioramas.
1930The first major hall of mammal habitat dioramas, the South Asiatic Hall, opens, displaying Vernay and Faunthorpe’s gift of specimens.
1933F. Trubee Davison becomes President of the Museum. A. Perry Osborn becomes Acting President from 1941–1946, after which Davison resumes his position.
1933The Hall of Ocean Life opens on the first floor. The hall is renovated in 1969 to include a 94-foot-long model of a blue whale suspended from the ceiling.
1935Legendary dinosaur explorer Roy Chapman Andrews becomes Director of the Museum.
1935The Hayden Planetarium opens.
1936Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Hall and Theodore Roosevelt Rotunda open.
1942The Hall of North American Mammals opens on the first floor with 10 dioramas.
1942The Akeley Hall of African Mammals opens under the direction of James L. Clark, the Museum’s Vice Director. Artists and scientists, led by Carl Akeley, had gone to Africa to sketch, photograph, collect, measure, and make molds of leaves, bark, moss, and other aspects of the terrain to make the dioramas as accurate as possible.
1951Alexander M. White becomes President of the Museum.
1957Hall of North American Forests opens on the first floor.
1958The Hall of North American Mammals reopens.
1960The Great Canoe exhibit is installed near the 77th Street entrance.
1963The Hall of North American Small Mammals opens on the first floor.
1964Hall of Primates opens on the third floor.
1966The Hall of Eastern Woodlands Indians opens on the third floor.
1967The Hall of Plains Indians opens on the third floor.
1967The Museum’s exterior is designated an official New York City Landmark.
1968Gardner D. Stout becomes President of the Museum.
1968The Hall of African Peoples opens on the second floor.
1970The Hall of Mexico and Central America opens on the second floor.
1971The Hall of Pacific Peoples opens on the third floor, reopens as Margaret Mead Hall of Pacific Peoples in 1984.
1972The Frederick H. Leonhardt People Center opens on the second floor.
1973Gallery 3, a special-exhibition space on the third floor, is completed.
1973The Hall of Reptiles and Amphibians opens on the third floor.
1974The Louis Calder Laboratory and the Alexander M. White Natural Science Center are completed on the second floor.
1975Robert G. Goelet becomes President of the Museum.
1975The Theodore Roosevelt Rotunda on the Museum’s second floor is designated an Interior Landmark.
1976The Morgan Memorial Hall of Gems and the Harry Frank Guggenheim Hall of Minerals open on the first floor.
1980The Gardner D. Stout Hall of Asian Peoples opens on the second floor.
1981The Arthur Ross Hall of Meteorites opens on the first floor.
1983The Charles A. Dana Education Wing is completed.
1988George D. Langdon, Jr., becomes President of the Museum.
1989The Hall of South American Peoples opens on the second floor. The original South American hall opened in 1907 and closed in the 1960s.
1991The Mongolian Academy of Sciences invites the Museum to take part in a joint paleontological expedition to the Gobi, the first such expedition to include Western scientists since the Central Asiatic Expedition in the 1920s. These joint expeditions now take place annually.
1991A five-story-high Barosaurus cast is installed in the Theodore Roosevelt Rotunda, becoming the world’s highest freestanding dinosaur display.
1992The Research Library's new facility opens.
1992The Center for Biodiversity and Conservation is established.
1992The Hall of Human Biology and Evolution opens on the first floor.
1996Major renovations are completed on the fossil halls on the fourth floor of the Museum. Openings during this period include: the Hall of Primitive Mammals, the Paul and Irma Milstein Hall of Advanced Mammals, the Hall of Saurischian Dinosaurs, the Hall of Ornithischian Dinosaurs, the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Orientation Center, and the Hall of Vertebrate Origins.
1996Priest Rose Center for Earth and Space begins.
1997The National Center for Science Literacy, Education and Technology is created, in partnership with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
1998The Hall of Biodiversity opens on the first floor.
1999The David S. and Ruth L. Gottesman Hall of Planet Earth on the first floor is the first component of the Rose Center to open. The customized one-of-a-kind Zeiss Star Projector (Mark IX), the most advanced in the world, is installed in the new Hayden Planetarium.The C. V. Starr Natural Science Building opens.
2000The Frederick Phineas and Sandra Priest Rose Center for Earth and Space opens to the public. The Arthur Ross Terrace opens adjacent to the Rose Center.
2001The Judy and Josh Weston Pavilion opens, adding an entrance to the Museum on Columbus Avenue. The Discovery Room opens on the first floor.
2002The Museum opens the renovated Samuel J. and Ethel LeFrak Theater. The Museum's main auditorium, restored to its late 19th-century design by Josiah Cleaveland Cady, is a venue for scientific lectures, meetings, public programs, and large-format films
2003The Museum opens the restored and renovated Milstein Hall of Ocean Life, which features high-definition video projections, interactive computer stations, hands-on models, 14 renovated classic dioramas, and eight new ocean ecosystem displays. The centerpiece of the hall remains the 94-foot model of a blue whale, now resculpted and repainted to more accurately reflect the appearance of a blue whale at sea. The Museum opens the reconceptualized and renovated Arthur Ross Hall of Meteorites. New exhibits, rare Moon and Mars rocks, and over 130 scientifically significant meteorites tell the story of the origins of the solar system.
June 2004The Museum installs a new Earthquake Monitoring Station in the Gottesman Hall of Planet Earth. The seismograph records and illustrates real-time seismic data for the public via a global network of seismic stations accessible in real-time to the Museum and other similar institutions.
2005The Museum marks the 70th Anniversary of the opening of the original Hayden Planetarium.
2006The Museum hosts the premiere of the movie A Night at the Museum, based on the Museum and starring Ben Stiller, Mickey Rooney, and Dick Van Dyke. Afterward, the Museum inaugurates Night at the Museum Sleepovers for families and groups with children ages 6 to 13.
2007The Museum opens the Anne and Bernard Spitzer Hall of Human Origins, which presents comprehensive evidence of human evolution. The new hall explores the most profound mysteries of humankind: who we are, where we came from, and what is in store for the future of the human species.
2009The Museum completes a major renovation and restoration project of the landmark 77th Street "castle" facade. The project included the repair and cleaning of masonry along the entire 700-foot-long south side and the complete reconstruction of the 42-foot wide arch of the porte-cochere. A separate but related project included the re-design and restoration of the 77th Street entry court, the new Arthur Ross Plaza.