American Museum of Natural History

The naturalist Albert S. Bickmore devised the idea for the American Museum of Natural History in 1861.^[10] At the time, he was studying in Cambridge, Massachusetts, at Louis Agassiz's Museum of Comparative Zoology.^[10][11] Observing that many European natural history museums were in populous cities, Bickmore wrote in a biography: "Now New York is our city of greatest wealth and therefore probably the best location for the future museum of natural history for our whole land."^[10] For several years, Bickmore lobbied for the establishment of a natural history museum in New York.^[12] Upon the end of the American Civil War, Bickmore asked numerous prominent New Yorkers, such as William E. Dodge Jr., to sponsor his museum.^[13][14] Although Dodge himself could not fund the museum at the time, he introduced the naturalist to Theodore Roosevelt Sr., the father of future U.S. president Theodore Roosevelt.^[13][15]

Calls for a natural history museum increased after Barnum's American Museum burned down in 1868.^[13] Eighteen prominent New Yorkers wrote a letter to the Central Park Commission that December, requesting the creation of a natural history museum in Central Park.^[11][16][17] Central Park commissioner Andrew Haswell Green indicated his support for the project in January 1869.^[17][16] A board of trustees was created for the museum. The next month, Bickmore and Joseph Hodges Choate drafted a charter for the museum, which the board of trustees approved without any changes. It was in this charter that the "American Museum of Natural History" name was first used.^[18] Bickmore said he wanted the museum's name to reflect his "expectation that our museum will ultimately become the leading institution of its kind in our country", similar to the British Museum.^[18] Before the museum was established, Bickmore needed to secure approval from Boss Tweed, leader of the powerful and corrupt Tammany Hall political organization. The legislation to establish the American Museum of Natural History had to be signed by John Thompson Hoffman, the governor of New York, who was associated with Tweed.^[19]

Hoffman signed the legislation creating the museum on April 6, 1869,^[20][21] with John David Wolfe as its first president.^[22][a] Subsequently, the chairman of the AMNH's executive committee asked Green if the museum could use the top two stories of Central Park's Arsenal, and Green approved the request in January 1870.^[21] Insect specimens were placed on the lower level of the Arsenal,^[23] while stones, fossils, mammals, birds, fish, and reptiles were placed on the upper level.^[24] The museum opened within the Arsenal on May 22, 1871.^[24][25] The AMNH became popular in the following years. The Arsenal location had 856,773 visitors in the first nine months of 1876 alone, more than the British Museum had recorded for all of 1874.^[26]

Drawing of the AMNH south facade, publication 1916

Meanwhile, the AMNH's directors had identified Manhattan Square (bounded by Eighth Avenue/Central Park West, 81st Street, Ninth Avenue/Columbus Avenue, and 77th Street) as a site for a permanent structure.^[11][27] Several prominent New Yorkers had raised $500,000 to fund the construction of the new building. The city's park commissioners then reserved Manhattan Square as the site of the permanent museum, and another $200,000 was raised for the building fund.^[28] Numerous dignitaries and officials, including U.S. president Ulysses S. Grant, attended the museum's groundbreaking ceremony on June 3, 1874.^[29][30][31]

The museum opened on December 22, 1877, with a ceremony attended by U.S. president Rutherford B. Hayes.^[32][26] The old exhibits were removed from the Arsenal in 1878, and the AMNH was debt-free by the next year.^[33]

The museum's 1,350-seat lecture hall opened in October 1900, as did the Native American and Mexican halls in the west wing.^[85][86] During the 1900s, the AMNH sponsored several expeditions to grow its collection, including a trip to Mexico,^[87] a trip to collect fauna from the Pacific Northwest,^[88] a trip to collect art in China,^[89] and an expedition to collect rocks in local caves.^[90] One such exhibition yielded a brontosaurus skeleton, which was the centerpiece of the dinosaur hall that opened in February 1905.^[91][92]

In the early 1920s, museum president Henry Fairfield Osborn planned a new entrance for the AMNH, which was to contain a memorial to Theodore Roosevelt.^[93] Also around that time, the New York state government formed a commission to study the feasibility of a Roosevelt memorial.^[93][94] After a dispute over whether to put the memorial in Albany or in New York City,^[95] the government of New York City offered a site next to the AMNH for consideration.^[96] The commission rejected a "conventional Greek mausoleum" design, instead opting to design a triumphal arch and hall in a Roman style.^[93] In 1925, the AMNH's trustees hosted an architectural design competition, selecting John Russell Pope to design the memorial hall.^[97][98] Construction began in 1929,^[99] and the trustees approved final plans the next year.^[100] J. Harry McNally was the general contractor.^[101] Roosevelt's cousin, U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt, dedicated the memorial on January 19, 1936.^[102][103]

The original building was later known as "Wing A". During the 1950s, the top floor was renovated into a library, being redecorated with what Christopher Gray of The New York Times described as "dropped ceilings and the other usual insults".^[104] The ten-story Childs Frick Building, which contained the AMNH's fossil collection, was added to the museum in the 1970s.^[105][106]

The architect Kevin Roche and his firm Roche-Dinkeloo have been responsible for the master planning of the museum since the 1990s.^[107] Various renovations to both the interior and exterior have been carried out. Renovations to the Dinosaur Hall were undertaken beginning in 1991,^[107] and Roche-Dinkeloo designed the eight-story AMNH Library in 1992.^[108] The museum's Rose Center for Earth and Space was completed in 2000.^[109][110]

In 2014, the museum published plans for a $325 million, 195,000 ft² (18,100 m²) annex, the Richard Gilder Center for Science, Education, and Innovation, on the Columbus Avenue side. It was named after stockbroker and philanthropist Richard Gilder.^[115]

On October 11, 2016, the Landmarks Preservation Commission unanimously approved the expansion. Construction of the Gilder Center, which was expected to break ground the next year following design development and Environmental Impact Statement stages, would entail demolition of three museum buildings built between 1874 and 1935.^[116] The museum filed plans for the expansion in August 2017,^[117] but due to community opposition, construction did not start until June 2019.^[118][119]

On May 4, 2023, the Gilder Center opened,^[120][121] and the museum had 1.5 million visitors over the next three months.^[122] In 2025, the AMNH began providing free "Discoverer" memberships to Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program recipients.^[123][124]

In late 2023, the museum announced that it would stop displaying human remains from its collection.^[125][126] Despite the 1990 passage of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), as late as 2023, the AMNH held an estimated 1,900 Native American remains that had not been repatriated.^[127]

In January 2024, the museum closed a number of displays and the AMNH's Eastern Woodlands and Great Plains halls, or about 10,000 square feet.^[128][129] The museum agreed to repatriate the remains that July.^[130]

Named after taxidermist Carl Akeley, the Akeley Hall of African Mammals is a two-story hall on the second floor, directly west of the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Hall. It connects to the Hall of African Peoples to the west.^[162] The Hall of African Mammals' 28 dioramas depict in meticulous detail the great range of ecosystems found in Africa and the mammals endemic to them. The centerpiece of the hall is a herd of eight African elephants in a characteristic 'alarmed' formation.^[163] Though the mammals are typically the main feature in the dioramas, birds and flora of the regions are occasionally featured as well.^[164] The hall in its current form was completed in 1936.^[165][166]

The Hall of African Mammals was first proposed to the museum by Carl Akeley around 1909; he proposed 40 dioramas featuring the rapidly vanishing landscapes and animals of Africa. Daniel Pomeroy, a trustee of the museum and partner at J.P. Morgan & Co., offered investors the opportunity to accompany the museum's expeditions in Africa in exchange for funding.^[167] Akeley began collecting specimens for the hall as early as 1909, famously encountering Theodore Roosevelt in the midst of the Smithsonian-Roosevelt African expedition.^[168] On these early expeditions, Akeley was accompanied by his former apprentice in taxidermy, James L. Clark, and artist, William R. Leigh.^[167] When Akeley returned to Africa to collect gorillas for the hall's first diorama, Clark remained behind and began scouring the country for artists to create the backgrounds. The eventual appearance of the first habitat groups impacted the design of other diorama halls, including Birds of the World, the Hall of North American Mammals, the Vernay Hall of Southeast Asian Mammals, and the Hall of Oceanic Life.^[167]

After Akeley's unexpected death during the Eastman-Pomeroy expedition in 1926, responsibility of the hall's completion fell to James L. Clark, who hired architectural artist James Perry Wilson in 1933 to assist Leigh in the painting of backgrounds. Wilson made many improvements on Leigh's techniques, including a range of methods to minimize the distortion caused by the dioramas' curved walls.^[167] In 1936, William Durant Campbell, a wealthy board member with a desire to see Africa, offered to fund several dioramas if allowed to obtain the specimens himself. Clark agreed to this arrangement, resulting in the acquisition of numerous large specimens.^[167][169] Kane joined Leigh, Wilson, and several other artists in completing the hall's remaining dioramas.^[170] Though construction of the hall was completed in 1936,^[165][166] the dioramas gradually opened between the mid-1920s and early 1940s.^[170]

The Hall of Asian Mammals, sometimes referred to as the Vernay-Faunthorpe Hall of Asian Mammals, is directly south of the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Hall.^[162] It contains 8 complete dioramas, 4 partial dioramas, and 6 habitat groups of mammals and locations from India, Nepal, Burma, and Malaysia. The hall opened in 1930 and, similar to the Akeley Hall of African Mammals, is centered around 2 Asian elephants. At one point, a giant panda and Siberian tiger were also part of the Hall's collection, originally intended to be part of an adjoining Hall of North Asian Mammals (planned in the current location of Stout Hall of Asian Peoples). These specimens can currently be seen in the Hall of Biodiversity.^[163][172]

Specimens for the Hall of Asian Mammals were collected over six expeditions led by British-born antiques dealer Arthur S. Vernay and Col. John Faunthorpe (as noted by stylized plaques at both entrances). The expeditions were funded entirely by Vernay, who characterized the expense as a British tribute to American involvement in World War I.^[173] The first Vernay-Faunthorpe expedition took place in 1922, when many of the animals Vernay was seeking, such as the Sumatran rhinoceros and Asiatic lion, were facing the possibility of extinction. Vernay made many appeals to regional authorities to obtain hunting permits;^[174] in later museum-related expeditions headed by Vernay, these appeals helped the museum gain access to areas previously restricted to foreign visitors.^[175] Artist Clarence C. Rosenkranz accompanied the Vernay-Faunthorpe expeditions as field artist and painted the majority of the diorama backgrounds in the hall.^[176] These expeditions were also well documented in both photo and video, with enough footage of the first expedition to create a feature-length film, Hunting Tigers in India (1929).^[177]

The Bernard Family Hall of North American Mammals is on the first floor, directly west of the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Hall.^[162] features 43 dioramas of various mammals of the American continent, north of tropical Mexico. Each diorama places focus on a particular species, ranging from the largest megafauna to the smaller rodents and carnivorans. Notable dioramas include the Alaskan brown bears looking at a salmon after they scared off an otter, a pair of wolves, a pair of Sonoranjaguars, and dueling bull Alaska moose.

The Hall of North American Mammals opened in 1942 with only ten dioramas.^[178] Another 16 dioramas were added in 1963.^[179] A massive restoration project began in late 2011 following a large donation from Jill and Lewis Bernard.^[180][181] In October 2012 the hall was reopened as the Bernard Hall of North American Mammals.^[182]

The Stout Hall of Asian Peoples is a one-story hall on the museum's second floor in between the Hall of Asian Mammals and Birds of the World.^[162] It is named for Gardner D. Stout, a former president of the museum, and was primarily organized by Walter A. Fairservis, a longtime museum archaeologist. Opened in 1980, Stout Hall is the museum's largest anthropological hall and contains artifacts acquired by the museum between 1869 and the mid-1970s.^[213] Many famous expeditions sponsored by the museum are associated with the artifacts in the hall, including the Roy Chapman Andrews expeditions in Central Asia and the Vernay-Hopwood Chindwin expedition.^[214]

Stout Hall has two sections: Ancient Eurasia, a small section devoted to the evolution of human civilization in Eurasia, and Traditional Asia, a much larger section containing cultural artifacts from across the Asian continent. The latter section is organized to geographically correspond with two major trade routes of the Silk Road. Like many of the museum's exhibition halls, the artifacts in Stout Hall are presented in a variety of ways including exhibits, miniature dioramas, and five full-scale dioramas. Notable exhibits in the Ancient Eurasian section include reproductions from the archaeological sites of Teshik-Tash and Çatalhöyük, as well as a full size replica of a Hammurabi Stele. The Traditional Asia section contains areas devoted to major Asian countries, such as Japan, China, Tibet, and India, while also including a vast array of smaller Asian tribes including the Ainu, Semai, and Yakut.^[215]

• 
  A forced perspective, miniature diorama of Isfahan
• 
  A Yakut shaman performs a healing rite in this diorama
• 
  A range of costumes worn by women in Islamic Asia

Diorama depicting Pokot methods of animal husbandry

Spiritual costumes from a variety of African tribes

The Hall of African Peoples is behind Akeley Hall of African Mammals and underneath Sanford Hall of North American Birds.^[162] It is organized by the four major ecosystems found in Africa: River Valley, Grasslands, Forest-Woodland, and Desert. Each section presents artifacts and exhibits of the peoples native to the ecosystems throughout Africa. The hall contains three dioramas and notable exhibits include a large collection of spiritual costumes on display in the Forest-Woodland section. Uniting the sections of the hall is a multi-faceted comparison of African societies based on hunting and gathering, cultivation, and animal domestication. Each type of society is presented in a historical, political, spiritual, and ecological context. A small section of African diaspora spread by the slave trade is also included.^[216] Tribes and civilizations featured include:

• River Valley: Ancient Egyptians, Nubians, Kuba, Lozi
• Grasslands: Pokot, Shilluk, Barawa
• Forest-Woodland: Yoruba, Kofyar, Mbuti
• Desert: Ait Atta, Tuareg

The Hall of Mexico and Central America is a one-story hall on the museum's second floor behind Birds of the World and before the Hall of South American Peoples.^[162] It presents archaeological artifacts from a broad range of pre-Columbian civilizations that once existed across Mesoamerica, including the Maya, Olmec, Zapotec, and Aztec. Because the great majority of the written records of these civilizations did not survive the Spanish conquest, the overarching aim of the hall is to piece together what it is possible to know about them from the artifacts alone.

The museum has displayed pre-Columbian artifacts since its opening, only a short time after the discovery of the civilizations by archaeologists, with its first hall dedicated to the subject opening in 1899.^[217] As the museum's collection grew, the hall underwent major renovations in 1944 and again in 1970 when it re-opened in its current form.^[218][219] Notable artifacts on display include the Kunz Axe and a full-scale replica of Tomb 104 from the Monte Albán archaeological site, originally displayed at the 1939 World's Fair.

The Hall of South American Peoples is a one-story hall on the northwestern corner of the second floor, next to the Hall of Mexico and Central America. The hall was first opened on the third floor in 1904, and exhibited archaeological objects, including mummies, from Peru, Colombia, Bolivia, and the West Indies. In 1931, the hall was expanded and relocated to the second floor under the direction of curators Ronald Olson and W.C. Bennett. The new hall included a recreation of a Chilean copper mine, and later, a temporary hall titled the Men of the Montaña, which featured Peruvian cultural artifacts from the Cashibo, and Panoan peoples.^[220] In 1989, the Hall was renovated and reopened as a permanent exhibition, focusing on the technology and artistry of the ancient Andean and traditional Amazonian cultures, led by curators Craig Morris, Junius Bird, and Robert Carneiro.^{[221][222][220]} The Hall contains roughly 2,300 objects from various ancient South American cultures, including the Moche, Chávin, Chancay, Paracas, Nazca, and Inca.^[223][224] A number of the artifacts on display come from the Roosevelt Collections, which were collected by Theodore Roosevelt on expeditions to South America in the early 20th century and donated to the museum.^[224]

The Hall of Pacific Peoples is on the southwestern corner of the third floor, accessed through the Hall of Plains Indians.^[162] The cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead had founded the Hall of Pacific Peoples in 1971.^[225] From the time Mead began curatorial work on the hall in 1945, she conceived an exhibit environment that would emulate sights and sounds from the Pacific regions on display.^[226] After Mead's death in 1978, the hall reopened in December 1984 as the Margaret Mead Hall of Pacific Peoples.^[227][228] The new hall, designed by Eugene Burgmann, maintained the blue-themed ocean and sky ambiance of the original hall.^[226] The hall was once again closed in 1997 and reopened in 2001 with an updated design that retained the geocultural "alcoves" first installed with the 1984 remodel.^[229]

The Margaret Mead Hall of Pacific Peoples contains artifacts from New Zealand, Australia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Micronesia, Melanesia and other Pacific islands.^{[230][231][229]} Mead had collected 250 of the 1,500 items in the hall. Some of these were probably selected from the 3,284 items she collected for the American Museum of Natural History during fieldwork in New Guinea and other Pacific island locations, 1928–1939.^[232] Others, such as the theatrical set from a puppet play in Bali, were chosen from among the approximately 600 items that Mead and her anthropologist husband Gregory Bateson had sent to the American Museum of Natural History while they were conducting fieldwork in Bali, 1936–1938.^[229] The exhibits in the Margaret Mead Hall of Pacific Peoples also include a fiberglass cast of an Easter Islandmoai statue and capes made of honeycreeper feathers.^[231]

The Anne and Bernard Spitzer Hall of Human Origins, formerly The Hall of Human Biology and Evolution, is on the south side of the first floor, near the western end of the museum.^[162] It opened under its current name on February 10, 2007.^[252][253] When it first opened in 1921, the hall was known as the "Hall of the Age of Man", the only major exhibition in the United States to present an in-depth investigation of human evolution.^[254] The displays traced the story of Homo sapiens, illuminated the path of human evolution and examined the origins of human creativity.^[255]

Many of the displays from the original hall can still be viewed in the present expanded format. These include life-size dioramas of human predecessors Australopithecus afarensis, Homo ergaster, Neanderthal, and Cro-Magnon, showing each species demonstrating the behaviors and capabilities that scientists believe they were capable of. Also displayed are full-sized casts of important fossils, including the 3.2-million-year-old Lucy skeleton and the 1.7-million-year-old Turkana Boy, and Homo erectus specimens including a cast of Peking Man.^[255] The hall also features replicas of ice age art found in the Dordogne region of southwestern France. The limestone carvings of horses were made nearly 26,000 years ago and are considered to represent some of the earliest artistic expression of humans.^[253]

The first dinosaur hall in the museum opened in 1905.^[91][92] The 4th floor includes the following halls:^[271]

• Hall of Saurischian Dinosaurs (recognized by their grasping hand, long mobile neck, and the downward/forward position of the pubis bone, they are forerunners of the modern bird)^[272]
• Hall of Ornithischian Dinosaurs (defined for a pubic bone that points toward the back)
• Hall of Vertebrate Origins
• Hall of Primitive Mammals
• Hall of Advanced Mammals

The dinosaur halls were temporarily closed for renovation starting in 1990.^[273] The first halls to reopen were the primitive-mammal and advanced-mammal halls, part of the Lila Acheson Wallace Wing of Mammals and Their Extinct Relatives, which opened in 1994.^[274][275] The Halls of Saurischian Dinosaurs and Ornithischian Dinosaurs reopened in 1995 as part of a $12 million expansion.^[276][277] The Hall of Vertebrate Origins opened in 1996.^[269]

The fossils on display include:

• Tyrannosaurus rex: Composed almost entirely of real fossil bones, it is mounted in a horizontal stalking pose balanced on powerful legs. The specimen is actually composed of fossil bones from two T. rex skeletons discovered in Montana in 1902 and 1908 by famous dinosaur hunter Barnum Brown.^[278]
• Mammuthus: Larger than its relative the woolly mammoth, these fossils are from an animal that lived 11,000 years ago in Indiana.^[279]
• Apatosaurus or Brontosaurus: This giant specimen was discovered at the end of the 19th century. Although most of its fossil bones are original, the skull is not, since none was found on site. The skeleton is composed primarily of the specimen AMNH 460, as well as specimens AMNH 222, AMNH 339, AMNH 592, and casts of the Brontosaurus excelsus holotype YPM 1980.^[280][281] It was only many years later that the first Apatosaurus skull was discovered, and so a plaster cast of that skull was made and placed on the museum's mount. A Camarasaurus skull had been used mistakenly until a correct skull was found.^[282] It is not entirely certain whether this specimen is a Brontosaurus or an Apatosaurus, and therefore it is considered an "unidentified apatosaurine", as it could also potentially be its own genus and species.^[281]
• Brontops: Extinct mammal distantly related to the horse and rhinoceros. It lived 35 million years ago in what is now South Dakota. It is noted for its magnificent and unusual pair of horns.^[283]
• A skeleton of Edmontosaurus annectens, a large herbivorousornithopod dinosaur. The specimen is an example of a "mummified" dinosaur fossil in which the soft tissue and skin impressions were imbedded in the surrounding rock. The specimen is mounted as it was found, lying on its side with its legs drawn up and head drawn backwards.^[284]
• On September 26, 2007, an 80-million-year-old, 2 ft (61 cm) diameter fossil of an ammonite, which is composed entirely of the gemstone ammolite, made its debut at the museum. Neil Landman, curator of fossil invertebrates, explained that ammonites (shelled cephalopodmollusks in the subclass Ammonoidea) became extinct 66 million years ago, in the same extinction event that killed the dinosaurs. Korite International donated the fossil after its discovery in Alberta, Canada.^[285]
• One skeleton of an Allosaurus scavenging from a Brontosaurus corpse based on fossils found at Bone Cabin Quarry preserving large bite marks on Apatosaurine vertebrae.^{[286][287][288]}
• The only known skull of Andrewsarchus mongoliensis.^[289]
• A display of various species of ground sloths including Megalocnus rodens, Scelidotherium cuvieri, Megalonyx wheatleyi and Glossotherium robustus

A Triceratops and a Stegosaurus (nicknamed Apex) are also both on display, among many other specimens.^[290][291]

Besides the fossils in museum display, many specimens are stored in the collections available for scientists. Those include important specimens such as complete diplodocid skull,^[292] tyrannosaurid teeth, sauropod vertebrae, and many holotypes.

The AMNH operates a biological field station in Portal, Arizona, among the Chiricahua Mountains. The Southwestern Research Station was established in 1955, purchased with a grant from philanthropist David Rockefeller, and with entomologist Mont Cazier as its first director.^[321] The station, in a "biodiversity hotspot", is used by researchers and students, and offers occasional seminars to the public.^[322]