Description
The American Museum of Natural History is the huge natural history museum on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, across from Central Park: 21 connected buildings, 45 permanent exhibition halls and a planetarium, with about 5 million visits a year. It is the place for dinosaurs, whales and the universe.
The fossil halls hold a T. rex made almost entirely of real bones, from two skeletons found in Montana. In the Hall of Ocean Life a blue whale, 94 feet long, hangs in the air. In the Akeley Hall of African Mammals, a herd of eight elephants stands on alert among 28 dioramas.
Only a small fraction of the collection can be on show at any time, so it pays to pick a few halls and give them time.
The Rose Center for Earth and Space, opened in 2000, is a glass cube six stories high around a sphere that seems to float, home to the Hayden Planetarium. Its architect called it a "cosmic cathedral." The museum also keeps the Star of India, in the halls of gems and minerals.
One exhibit weighs 34 tons and rests on columns that run through the floor down to the bedrock of Manhattan. It is Ahnighito, a piece of the Cape York meteorite from Greenland. And it is just one of about 32 million specimens.
It all began in 1861 with a young naturalist, Albert S. Bickmore, who was sure that New York, the richest city in the country, deserved a great museum of nature. He found a powerful ally: Theodore Roosevelt Sr., father of the future president.
The museum opened in 1871 in the Arsenal in Central Park, then moved across the street into a building by Calvert Vaux. In 1936 the son got a monumental memorial of his own, the main entrance hall on Central Park West.
Its explorers brought the world home. Roy Chapman Andrews hunted dinosaurs in the Gobi Desert; the taxidermist Carl Akeley went to Africa for the dioramas of the hall that bears his name.
Don't miss
• The fossil halls and the T. rex.
• The blue whale.
• The Akeley Hall of African Mammals.
• The Rose Center and its sphere.
• The Ahnighito meteorite.
Did you know?
• Night at the Museum is set here, but its interiors were shot on a sound stage in Vancouver.
• The Brontosaurus once wore the wrong head: a Camarasaurus skull, until the right one was found.
The fossil halls hold a T. rex made almost entirely of real bones, from two skeletons found in Montana. In the Hall of Ocean Life a blue whale, 94 feet long, hangs in the air. In the Akeley Hall of African Mammals, a herd of eight elephants stands on alert among 28 dioramas.
Only a small fraction of the collection can be on show at any time, so it pays to pick a few halls and give them time.
The Rose Center for Earth and Space, opened in 2000, is a glass cube six stories high around a sphere that seems to float, home to the Hayden Planetarium. Its architect called it a "cosmic cathedral." The museum also keeps the Star of India, in the halls of gems and minerals.
One exhibit weighs 34 tons and rests on columns that run through the floor down to the bedrock of Manhattan. It is Ahnighito, a piece of the Cape York meteorite from Greenland. And it is just one of about 32 million specimens.
It all began in 1861 with a young naturalist, Albert S. Bickmore, who was sure that New York, the richest city in the country, deserved a great museum of nature. He found a powerful ally: Theodore Roosevelt Sr., father of the future president.
The museum opened in 1871 in the Arsenal in Central Park, then moved across the street into a building by Calvert Vaux. In 1936 the son got a monumental memorial of his own, the main entrance hall on Central Park West.
Its explorers brought the world home. Roy Chapman Andrews hunted dinosaurs in the Gobi Desert; the taxidermist Carl Akeley went to Africa for the dioramas of the hall that bears his name.
Don't miss
• The fossil halls and the T. rex.
• The blue whale.
• The Akeley Hall of African Mammals.
• The Rose Center and its sphere.
• The Ahnighito meteorite.
Did you know?
• Night at the Museum is set here, but its interiors were shot on a sound stage in Vancouver.
• The Brontosaurus once wore the wrong head: a Camarasaurus skull, until the right one was found.