American Museum of Natural History (New York City)

Central Park West at 79th Street
New York, NY 10024-5192
www.amnh.org/

The Museum was founded in 1869. Theodore Roosevelt, Sr., the father of the 26th US President, Theodore Roosevelt, was one of the founders.

The Museum's first home was the old Arsenal building in Central Park. 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, (see illustration) 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, of 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 have been 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.

Filming location for movie A night of the museum.