The American Museum of Natural History

The American Museum of Natural History (abbreviated as AMNH), located on the Upper West Side <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upper_West_Side> of Manhattan <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan> in New York City <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City>, United States <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States>, is one of the largest and most celebrated museums <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Museum> in the world. Located in park-like grounds across the street from Central Park <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Park>, the Museum comprises 25 interconnected buildings that house 46 permanent exhibition halls, research laboratories, and its renowned library.collections contain over 32 million specimens, of which only a small fraction can be displayed at any given time. The Museum has a scientific staff of more than 200, and sponsors over 100 special field expeditions each year.Museum was founded in 1869. Prior to construction of the present complex, the Museum was housed in the older Arsenal building <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arsenal_(Central_Park)> in Central Park <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Park>. Theodore Roosevelt, Sr. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Roosevelt,_Sr.>, the father of the 26th U.S. President <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Roosevelt>, was one of the founders along with John David Wolfe, William T. Blodgett, Robert L. Stuart, Andrew H. Green <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Haswell_Green>, Robert Colgate, Morris K. Jesup <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_Ketchum_Jesup>, Benjamin H. Field, D. Jackson Steward, Richard M. Blatchford, J. Pierpont Morgan <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Pierpont_Morgan>, Adrian Iselin, Moses H. Grinnell <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moses_H._Grinnell>, Benjamin B. Sherman, A. G. Phelps Dodge <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anson_Dodge>, William A. Haines, Charles A. Dana <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Anderson_Dana>, Joseph H. Choate <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Hodges_Choate>, Henry G. Stebbins <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_G._Stebbins>, Henry Parish, and Howard Potter. The founding of the Museum realized the dream of naturalist Dr. Albert S. Bickmore <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_S._Bickmore>. Bickmore, a one-time student of Harvard <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard> zoologist <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoologist> Louis Agassiz <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Agassiz>, lobbied tirelessly for years for the establishment of a natural history museum in New York. His proposal, backed by his powerful sponsors, won the support of the Governor of New York <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Governor_of_New_York>, John Thompson Hoffman <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Thompson_Hoffman>, who signed a bill officially creating the American Museum of Natural History on April 6, 1869.1874, the cornerstone was laid for the Museum's first building, which is now hidden from view by the many buildings in the complex that today occupy most of Manhattan Square. The original Victorian Gothic <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gothic_Revival_architecture>building, which was opened in 1877, was designed by Calvert Vaux <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvert_Vaux> and J. WreyMould <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Wrey_Mould>, both already closely identified with the architecture of Central Park. It was soon eclipsed by the south range of the Museum, designed by J. Cleaveland Cady <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Cleaveland_Cady>, an exercise in rusticated brownstone neo-Romanesque <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richardsonian_Romanesque>, influenced by H. H. Richardson <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Hobson_Richardson>. It extends 700 feet (210 m) along West 77th Street, with corner towers 150 feet (46 m) tall. Its pink brownstone and granite, similar to that found at Grindstone Island <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grindstone_Island> in the St. Lawrence River <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Lawrence_River>, came from quarries at Picton Island, New York. The entrance on Central Park West <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Park_West>, the New York State Memorial to Theodore Roosevelt, completed by John Russell Pope <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Russell_Pope> in 1936, is an overscaled Beaux-Arts <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaux-Arts_architecture> monument. It leads to a vast Roman basilica, where visitors are greeted with a cast of a skeleton of a rearing Barosaurus <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barosaurus> defending her young from an Allosaurus <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allosaurus>. The Museum is also accessible through its 77th street foyer, renamed the "Grand Gallery" and featuring a fully suspended Haida <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haida_people> canoe. The hall leads into the oldest extant exhibit in the Museum, the hall of Northwest Coast Indians <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North-West_Coast_Indians>.1930 little has been added to the original building. The Museum's south front, spanning 77th Street from Central Park West to Columbus Avenue <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninth_Avenue_(Manhattan)> was cleaned, repaired and re-emerged in 2009. Steven Reichl, a spokesman for the Museum, said that work would include restoring 650 black-cherry window frames and stone repairs. The Museum’s consultant on the latest renovation is Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates, Inc. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiss,_Janney,_Elstner_Associates,_Inc.>, an architectural and engineering firm with headquarters inNorthbrook, IL <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northbrook,_IL>.Museum boasts habitat dioramas <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diorama> of African, Asian and North American mammals <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mammals>, a full-size model of a Blue Whale <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Whale> suspended in the Milstein Family Hall of Ocean Life, sponsored by the family of Paul Milstein <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Milstein> (reopened in 2003), a 62 foot (19 m) Haida carved and painted war canoe <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canoe> from the Pacific Northwest <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Northwest>, a massive 31 ton piece of the Cape York meteorite <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_York_meteorite>, and the Star of India <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_of_India_(gem)>, the largest starsapphire <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapphire> in the world. The circuit of an entire floor is devoted to vertebrate <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertebrate> evolution <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution>.Museum has extensive anthropological collections: Asian People, Pacific People, Man in Africa, American Indian <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_Americans_in_the_United_States> collections, general Native American <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_peoples_of_the_Americas> collections, and collections from Mexico <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexico> and Central America <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_America> [2].