American Museum of Natural History Research Library
author: American Museum of Natural History

American Museum of Natural History. Jesup Hall of North American Woods.; Jesup Collection of Woods; Jesup Collection of North American Woods; Forestry, North American; Jesup Collection of Trees of North America; Jesup Hall of Forestry; Forestry and Conservation; Forestry Hall
birth: 1882
death: 1952
Permanent exhibition. Opened 1882 and closed approximately 1950-1952. Located on Floor 1, Section 3. Shortly after Morris K. Jesup became Museum president in 1881, The Jesup Hall of North American Woods was created as a collection, consisting of nearly 500 specimens, as part of the Economic Botany Department. In 1908, the hall became part of a new Department of Forestry. After Jesup's death, Mary Cynthia Dickerson took over the Forestry Department, and in 1909 the collection was rearranged to "bring out more clearly the classification of trees, their relationship and their economic uses" (1, 2012). Robert Marston was curator after Dickerson's retirement in 1919. By the mid-1940s, plans began for new forestry, botany, and landscape halls. The forestry and landscape halls became the Hall of North American Forests and the Felix M. Warburg Hall of New York State Environment (2, 2011; 1, 2012).
In order to create the Collection of North American Woods, Jesup hired Charles Sargeant to collect and prepare specimens; Jesup also obtained specimens from railroad and logging companies. In 1881, before they were exhibited in the Museum's permanent home between 77th and 81 Streets, the collection was exhibited in the Central Park Arsenal, the Museum's first building for exhibition. The collection was moved to the "Lower Hall" of the new building in 1882 (1, 2012). The 1895 Annual Report states that the Wood Hall opened to the public in the new building, but it is unclear whether the exhibition was merely reorganized or was moved to a space specific to the collection (3, 1895, p. 8-9).
The hall exhibited five-foot-long cross, longitudinal, and oblique sections of North American trees, which were grouped by family and location. Specimens were accompanied by water-color sketches and wax models of leaves, flowers, and fruit, small maps of geographical distribution, and labels explained the characteristics of the wood and its economic uses (4, 1904, p.38-39; 4, 1911, p. 28; 4, 1927, p. 8).
The famous Giant Sequoia, a section of a 1,400-year-old, 300-foot-tall sequoia tree felled in California in 1891, and other redwood trunk sections were originally exhibited in the Hall of Invertebrates (Darwin Hall), but were moved to the Jesup Wood Hall in 1912 (3, 1912, p.33; 5). The hall later featured a 45-foot-long, several million-year-old fossil tree trunk, the Menken Collection of Glass Flowers, and a "dissolving diorama", which depicted a scene of the Colorado White Pine Forest in Idaho, starting with a forest fire in the distance and dissolving into a scene of the same area after the fire (4, 1929, p. 34; 4, 1939, p. 54-55; 4, 1943, p. 54-44).
In 1946 planning began for three more modern halls covering topics in botany and forestry. Plans for a Botany Hall were proposed but not realized, however, the Landscape Hall (Felix M. Warburg Memorial Hall of New York State Environment) and the Forestry Hall (Hall of North American Forests), opened in 1951 and 1958, respectively (2, 2011).