The American Museum of Natural History, whose complex of 27 interconnected buildings sit in an 18-acre park off Central Park West in Manhattan, is home to 45 permanent exhibition halls, a library and a planetarium, as well as space for temporary exhibits and for research by its scientific staff.The institution began as a museum and library in 1869, with a mission to foster the study of science. It sponsored exploratory expeditions to what were then remote areas of the globe, like far-flung Pacific islands and the interior of Africa. These research trips helped build its collection of more than 32 million specimens and artifacts, and the effort continues today with some 120 expeditions and field projects conducted annually throughout the world.American Museum of Natural History is a Beautiful Place For Vacations. Come see why the American Museum of Natural History was voted the Number One Family Attraction in New York City. This popular destination is the largest Natural History Museum in the world. It’s bursting with artifacts, displays and exhibits, all geared to let out secrets about the beautiful natural world.
Another museum favorite is the 94-foot-long model of a blue whale, which dominates the Milstein Hall of Ocean Life on the first floor, surrounded by videos of ocean life. The Hayden Planetarium is in the Rose Center for Earth and Science, an illuminated sphere inside a transparent cube designed by James Stewart Polshek that opened in 2000.
Among the most impressive sights at the museum are its internationally renowned dioramas, where science meets art. Painters, photographers, naturalists and taxidermists recreate geographically precise scenes from nature and then populate them by mounting anatomically correct specimens: thundering elephants, the American bison, African lions, the wading birds of the Everglades and many others.
Rose Center and Planetarium
The Hayden Planetarium, connected to the Museum, is now part of the Rose Center for Earth and Space, housed in a glass cube containing the spherical Space Theater, designed by James Stewart Polshek. The Heilbrun Cosmic Pathway is one of the most popular exhibits in the Rose Center, which opened February 19, 2000.
The original Hayden Planetarium was founded in 1933 with a donation by philanthropist Charles Hayden. Opened in 1935, it was demolished and replaced in 2000 by the $210 million Frederick Phineas and Sandra Priest Rose Center for Earth and Space. Designed by James Stewart Polshek, the new building consists of a six-story high glass cube enclosing a 87-foot (27 m) illuminated sphere that appears to float — although it is actually supported by truss work. James Polshek has referred to his work as a “cosmic cathedral”. The Rose center and its adjacent plaza, both located on the north facade of the Museum, are regarded as some of Manhattan’s most outstanding recent architectural additions. The facility encloses 333,500 square feet (30,980 m2) of research, education, and exhibition space as well as the Hayden planetarium. Also located in the facility is the Department of Astrophysics, the newest academic research department in the Museum. Further, Polshek designed the 1,800-square-foot (170 m2) Weston Pavilion, a 43-foot (13 m) high transparent structure of “water white” glass along the Museum’s west facade. This structure, a small companion piece to the Rose Center, offers a new entry way to the Museum as well as opening further exhibition space for astronomically related objects. The planetarium’s former magazine, The Sky, merged with “The Telescope”, to become the leading astronomy magazine Sky & Telescope.
Library
From its founding, the Library of the American Museum of Natural History has grown into one of the world’s great natural history collections. In its early years, the Library expanded its collection mostly through such gifts as the John C. Jay conchological library, the Carson Brevoort library on fishes and general zoology, the ornithological library of Daniel Giraud Elliot, the Harry Edwards entomological library, the Hugh Jewett collection of voyages and travel and the Jules Marcou geology collection. In 1903 theAmerican Ethnological Society deposited its library in the Museum and in 1905 the New York Academy of Sciences followed suit by transferring its collection of 10,000 volumes. Today, the Library’s collections contain over 550,000 volumes of monographs, serials, pamphlets, reprints, microforms, and original illustrations, as well as film, photographic, archives and manuscripts, fine art, memorabilia and rare book collections. The new Library was designed by the firm Roche-Dinkeloo in 1992. It comprised a “55,000-square-foot space is sealed into five different “conservation zones,” ranging from the 50-person reading room and public offices, to areas more tightly controlled for humidity and temperature.”. The Library collects materials covering such subjects as mammalogy, earth and planetary science, astronomy and astrophysics, anthropology, entomology, herpetology, ichthyology, paleontology, ethology, ornithology, mineralogy, invertebrates, systematics, ecology, oceanography, conchology, exploration and travel,history of science, museology, bibliography, genomics, and peripheral biological sciences. The collection is rich in retrospective materials — some going back to the 15th century — that are difficult to find elsewhere.
Surroundings
The Museum is located at 79th Street and Central Park West, accessible via the B C trains of the New York City Subway. There is a low-level floor direct access to the Museum via the 81st Street – Museum of Natural History subway station on the IND Eighth Avenue Line at the south end of the upper platform (where the uptown trains arrive).
The Museum also houses the stainless steel time capsule designed after a competition won by Santiago Calatrava, which was sealed at the end of 2000 to mark themillennium. It takes the form of a folded saddle-shaped volume, symmetrical on multiple axes, that explores formal properties of folded spherical frames, which Calatrava described as a flower. It stands on a pedestal outside the Museum’s Columbus Avenue entrance. The capsule is to remain sealed until the year 3000.
In popular culture
- In the fourth volume of Mirage’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Michelangelo acts as a tour guide for visiting aliens. His first assignment is the Saurian Regenta Seri and her Styracodon bodyguards who wish to see the Museum, specifically the dinosaur exhibit.
- Several scenes in the 2004 movie The Day After Tomorrow were set in the Museum’s halls.
- The AMNH appears as a Resistance-controlled building in the Sierra game Manhunter: New York.
- Portions of the Sony PlayStation game Parasite Eve take place within the AMNH.
- The novel Murder at the Museum of Natural History, by Michael Jahn (1994), features the museum.
- In 2009, the Museum hosted the live finale of the second season of The Celebrity Apprentice.
- On early seasons of Friends, Ross Geller works at the Museum.
- The museum is featured in the How I Met Your Mother episode Natural History, although it is renamed the Natural History Museum.
- In a second season episode of The Spectacular Spider-Man titled “Destructive Testing”, Spider-Man fights Kraven the Hunter in the Museum.
Neighboring area
The museum is situated in a 17-acre (69,000 m2) park known as “Theodore Roosevelt Park”. The park contains pleasant park benches, beautiful gardens and fields, and a dog run. This small park has made the area around the museum very desirable and some of the most expensive real estate in the Upper West Side (even more so after the completion of the renovation of the southern-facing museum facade) lies in this area USA travel destinations. American Museum of Natural History is Awesome Place. In 2007 it was not uncommon to see museum facing apartments sell for as much as $2000 per square foot. Additionally, the museum is surrounded by many gourmet restaurants that have outdoor cafes where patrons can sit outside and enjoy the view.