Roy Chapman Andrews (foreground) helped design and build the Museum's first whale. Andrews went on to become a famous explorer and later director of the Museum.

In 1959 a new proposal for the Hall of Ocean Life was incorporated into the Museum's ten year plan to rejuvenate all of the exhibition halls in the Museum. The new plan entailed finally completing the Hall, incorporating the Hall of Fishes into the Hall of Ocean Life, and moving the shell collections into a new Hall of the Biology of Invertebrates. In May 1962, the Hall of Ocean Life was closed in order to begin the extensive renovation process.

A key component of the Hall of Ocean Life's renovation became the addition of a life-like blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus) model to replace a popular steel and papier-mâché whale model that had hung in the Biology of Mammals hall. Dr. Richard Van Gelder, then chairman of the Department of Mammalogy, was tasked with supervising the creation and installation of the whale that was to be the centerpiece of the new Hall.

This photo shows the Museum's blue whale model being attached to the Hall's roof trusses in 1969.

Van Gelder had to surmount many challenges to complete this monumental task, but perhaps the most difficult was to overcome a mandate that the whale could not be hung with wires from the ceiling of the Hall. Several alternative suspension methods were proposed including supporting the whale from a pedestal, using cantilevers to anchor it to the balcony, and even recreating the scene of a beached whale across the floor of the Hall—a plan that was only averted after Van Gelder suggested to a fund-raising committee that in order to "complete the attack on the senses" the scene should be replete with the sounds and smells of an actual beached whale. Finally, Van Gelder and his team hit upon the idea of attaching the whale at a single point to the roof trusses of the building itself-the manner in which the behemoth model still floats above the floor of the Hall today.

On February 26, 1969, the Hall of Ocean Life and Biology of Fishes was opened to the public. The remodeled Hall included fifteen dioramas of life in and adjacent to the seas and the most comprehensive exhibit on the phylogeny (evolutionary development and history) of fishes at the time. The most impressive exhibit in the Hall—the 94-foot blue whale suspended from the ceiling—weighed 21,000 pounds and had taken more than two years to construct. It was the largest model of a blue whale in existence and beat similar models at the British Museum and the Smithsonian by several feet. The whale was also a huge success with Museum visitors. On the first Sunday after the Hall's opening, more than 35,000 people came to see the blue whale setting a new attendance record for the Museum.