American Museum of Natural History - Tourist Attractions in New York City

The American Museum of Natural History is a landmark on the Upper West Side, Manhattan, New York, USA. The museum has a scientific staff of more than 200, and sponsors over 100 special field expeditions each year.

The Museum was founded in 1869 and housed in the old Arsenal building in Central Park. Theodore Roosevelt, Sr., the father of the 26th U.S. President, was a co-founder. In 1874, ground was broken for the present building, which occupies most of Manhattan Square. The original neo-Gothic range (1874-1877), by Calvert Vaux and Jacob Wrey Mould, who were collaborating with Frederick Law Olmsted in structures for Central Park, was soon eclipsed by the South range of the museum, by J. Cleaveland Cady, a robust exercise in rusticated brownstone neo-Romanesque, influenced by H. H. Richardson. A triumphal Roman entrance on Central Park West, completed by John Russell Pope in 1936, is an overscaled Beaux-Arts monument to Teddy Roosevelt. It leads to a vast Roman basilica, where the skeleton of a rearing Barosaurus defending her young from an Allosaurus, is not lost in the general monumentality.
On October 29, 1964, the Star of India along with several other precious gems, including the Eagle Diamond and the de Long Ruby were stolen from the museum by several thieves including Jack Murphy, who gained entrance by climbing through a bathroom window they had unlocked hours before the museum was closed. The Star of India and other gems were later recovered from a locker in a Miami bus station, but the Eagle Diamond seems to have been recut and lost Famous names associated with AMNH include the paleontologist and geologist Henry Fairfield Osborn, president for many years; the dinosaur-hunter of the Gobi Desert, Roy Chapman Andrews (one of the inspirations for Indiana Jones), George Gaylord Simpson, biologist Ernst Mayr, pioneer cultural anthropologists Franz Boas and Margaret Mead, and ornithologist Robert Cushman Murphy. J. P. Morgan was among famous benefactors of the Museum.

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AMNH Events

Starry Nights

Margaret Mead Film & Video Festival

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