Historical Timeline

tk © AMNH Library, Image 00310124

1869

  • Albert 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.

1871

  • A 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.

1872

  • Robert 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. 

1874

  • The cornerstone for the Museum's first building at 77th Street, a five-story, red brick-and-stone structure, is laid by U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant.

1877

  • The first building opens with U.S. President Rutherford B. Hayes presiding at a public ceremony.

1881

  • New 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 Gobi Desert, and travel to the Congo, taking Museum representatives to every continent on the globe.

1895

  • President Jesup hires Franz Boas to be the assistant curator in the Department of Ethnology.

1896

  • The Hall of Northwest Coast Indians, now called the Northwest Coast Hall, opens on the first floor.

1897–1902

  • Boas organizes the Jesup North Pacific Expedition. In the entire field of anthropology, nothing of comparable ambition or scope has ever before been attempted. The expedition yields an unparalleled record of the life and culture of the peoples of the North Pacific.

1906

  • Boas 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 joins the Museum's Division of Anthropology in 1926.

1908

  • Museum President Morris K. Jesup dies. Henry Fairfield Osborn becomes President. 

1913

  • Carl Akeley, a pioneer in the creation of lifelike mammal dioramas, writes to the Museum offering to devote five years to the creation of an African mammals hall.

1921

1922

  • Roy Chapman Andrews leads historic Central Asiatic Expeditions through the Gobi desert of Mongolia, discovering some of the richest dinosaur fossil sites in the world. Andrews and his team work there until the border between China and Outer Mongolia closes in 1930.

1926

  • The 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, to be mounted according to Akeley’s technique and displayed in dioramas.
  • Margaret Mead joins the Museum's Division of Anthropology, where she goes on to work for more than four decades, even after her official retirement in 1969. Over her long and influential career, she helps popularize cultural anthropology through bestselling books and curates exhibits about global cultures.

1930

  • The first major hall of mammal habitat dioramas, displaying Vernay and Faunthorpe’s specimens, opens. 

1933

  • F. Trubee Davison becomes President of the Museum. 
  • The Hall of Ocean Life opens on the first floor.

1935

  • Legendary dinosaur explorer Roy Chapman Andrews becomes Director of the Museum.
  • The Hayden Planetarium opens. Named for Charles Hayden, who pledged funds for its construction after visiting Chicago's Adler Planetarium during the 1933 World's Fair, New York City's planetarium drew half a million visitors in its first year, plus more than 130,000 New York City school children.

1936

  • Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Hall and the Theodore Roosevelt Rotunda open as part of the two-story Theodore Roosevelt Memorial, New York State's official memorial to the state's 33rd governor (1899-1900) and the nation's 26th President (1901-1909). Authorized by the New York State Legislature in 1924, the Memorial, which includes the Museum's Central Park West entrance, was built between 1929 and 1935. The corner stone was laid in 1931 by Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR), Theodore Roosevelt's fifth cousin, then the 44th governor of New York State. By the time the Memorial opened in 1936, FDR was serving as the 32nd President of the United States.

1942

  • The Hall of North American Mammals opens on the first floor with 10 dioramas. More are added through 1963. The gallery showcases what many consider to be the finest habitat dioramas in the world, many set in U.S. National Parks.
  • The 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.

1951

  • Alexander M. White becomes President of the Museum.

1958

1963

1964

1966

  • The Hall of Eastern Woodlands Indians opens on the third floor.

1967

  • The Hall of Plains Indians opens on the third floor.
  • The Museum’s exterior is designated an official New York City Landmark.

1968

1969

1970

1971

1975

  • Robert G. Goelet becomes President of the Museum.
  • The Theodore Roosevelt Rotunda on the Museum’s second floor is designated a New York City interior landmark.

1976

  • The Morgan Memorial Hall of Gems and the Harry Frank Guggenheim Hall of Minerals open on the first floor.

1977

1980

1981

1983

  • The Charles A. Dana Education Wing is completed.

1988

  • George D. Langdon, Jr., becomes President of the Museum.

1989

1991

  • The Mongolian Academy of Sciences invites the Museum to take part in a joint paleontological expedition to the Gobi Desert, the first such expedition to include Western scientists since the Central Asiatic Expedition in the 1920s. These joint expeditions take place annually.
  • A five-story-high Barosaurus cast is installed in the Theodore Roosevelt Rotunda, becoming the world’s highest freestanding dinosaur display.

1992

1993

  • Ellen V. Futter becomes President of the Museum.

1996

1997

  • The National Center for Science Literacy, Education and Technology is created, in partnership with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

1998

1999

2000

  • The completed Frederick Phineas and Sandra Priest Rose Center for Earth and Space opens to the public. The Arthur Ross Terrace opens next to the Rose Center.

2001

2002

  • The 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 giant-screen films.

2003

  • The 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.

2004

  • The Museum installs a new Earthquake Monitoring Station in the Gottesman Hall of Planet Earth. The seismograph 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.

2005

  • The Museum marks the 70th Anniversary of the opening of the original Hayden Planetarium.

2006

  • The 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.
  • The Richard Gilder Graduate School at the Museum is established, authorized by the State of New York to grant the M.Phil, Ph.D., and Honorary degrees and marking the first time an American museum was granted the authority to award its own Ph.D. degree.

2007

  • The 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.

2008

2009

  • The Museum completes a major renovation and restoration project of the landmark 77th Street "castle" facade. 

2011

2012

  • The restored Theodore Roosevelt Memorial and Bernard Family Hall of North American Mammals reopen to the public.
  • The first cohort of students begins in the Master of Arts in Teaching Earth science residency program.

2015

  • Countdown to Zero: Defeating Disease, an exhibition developed with The Carter Center to highlight global efforts to fight infections including Guinea worm disease, opens at the Museum. President Jimmy Carter speaks at the exhibition opening. 

2016

  • The Titanosaur, a 122-foot-long cast of a newly discovered dinosaur later formally named Patagotitan mayorum, goes on permanent display on the Museum's fourth floor.

2018

  • An updated exhibit about climate change opens in the Gottesman Hall of Planet Earth.

2019

  • The Museum's 150th celebration opens with T. Rex: The Ultimate Predator, a blockbuster exhibition about the tyrannosaur family.
  • The Museum breaks ground on the Richard Gilder Center for Science, Education, and Innovation.
  • Addressing the Statue, an exhibition about the history of the Theodore Roosevelt Equestrian Statue, opens in July.

2020

  • The Museum closes to visitors from March through September due to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

2021

  • The Museum opens a mass New York City vaccination site under the Blue Whale model, which sports a post-vaccination bandage on her fin in support of the COVID-19 vaccination program.
  • Allison and Roberto Mignone Halls of Gems and Minerals open, with a new Melissa and Keith Meister Gallery.
  • The Museum requests that the Equestrian Statue located on New York City public park land in front of the Museum's Central Park West Entrance be moved, and the New York City Public Design Commission unanimously approves the relocation. The Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library Foundation and the City of New York reach an agreement for the long-term loan and reconsideration of the Equestrian Statue.
  • On the 100th anniversary of the Second International Eugenics Conference, the Museum releases a statement to acknowledge, confront, and apologize for its role in the  movement to advance the pseudo-science of eugenics.

2022

  • The Equestrian Statue is moved from the Museum’s front steps.
  • A land acknowledgment plaque is installed in the Theodore Roosevelt Rotunda. It reads:
    • The American Museum of Natural History is located within Lenapehoking, the ancestral land of the Lenape. We acknowledge and honor the present-day Lenape for their ongoing, restorative relationship with their homeland and important contributions to the cultural life of the City of New York and the region.
  • The revitalized Northwest Coast Hall reopens.

 2023

2024

2025