The Wilderness Warrior - Douglas Brinkley [31]
Theodore Roosevelt, Sr., was one of eighteen Manhattanites who signed a letter to the commissioner of Central Park requesting a building site on the Upper West Side for the new museum. The spot chosen was Manhattan Square, which ran along Central Park West from Seventy-Seventh to Eighty-First Street. The New York Times singled out the elder Roosevelt as being “deeply interested in the enterprise” from the moment Bickmore had knocked on his door.79 President Ulysses S. Grant laid the museum’s cornerstone in 1874. As was to be expected, ideas regarding the mandate and magnitude of the new museum collided. Early bickering, for example, centered on whether dinosaur fossils should be displayed. The elder Roosevelt—a trustee—was for displaying them; paleontology, after all, as the French scientist Georges Cuvier had dramatically proved, was an exhilarating part of natural history. (Critics of fossils, however, believed they were a Darwinist ploy to somehow discredit what would become Creationism.) At Theodore Sr.’s request a delegation was sent to France to study Cuvier’s dinosaur bones and acquire outstanding taxidermy by Jules Verreaux.80
From the time it opened its doors in 1877, the American Museum of Natural History was a marvelous ticket-taking success. Visitors streamed en masse to see the new architectural wonder looming over a largely underdeveloped neighborhood. The original neo-Gothic building anchored the area, then home to squatters and goats. Huge turrets, conical roofs with heraldic eagles, and granite walls all added to its baronial elegance. At nighttime the illuminated museum could be seen from New Jersey, across the Hudson River.81 The interior decor was heavy with black walnut and ash. The museum attracted nearly as much press attention as the opening of the Empire State Building eventually would; even President Rutherford B. Hayes was on hand for the formal opening late in 1877.82 The inaugural displays focused on the glory of Darwinism (even though On the Origin of Species had been published eighteen years earlier, its impact in America was just being felt), scientific achievement, geographical discovery, and the natural sciences. An extraordinary collection of fossil invertebrates—purchased for $65,000 from the official New York state geologist—attracted the longest lines.83
Young Theodore came home from Harvard University to attend the museum’s opening and marveled at the seashells, beetles, and bird skins. He had donated twelve mice, a turtle, four bird eggs, and a red squirrel skull to the collection.84 Respectfully, he listened to President C. W. Eliot of Harvard, a dull blade on the podium, extol the “divinity” of the natural sciences. He was particularly drawn to the second floor of the main hall, which showcased Professor Daniel Elliot’s collection of North American birds. A stuffed dodo, a mummified crocodile, and a huge badger all apparently fascinated him no end.85
Nobody could have guessed that Theodore Jr., running around the museum excited about a mammoth tooth and a badger claw, would decades later have a wing of the museum dedicated in his honor for his efforts on behalf of U.S. conservation. Other great presidents—like Washington, Lincoln, and Jefferson—have beautiful memorials in Washington, D.C., along the Potomac River tidal basin, to celebrate their statesmanship. The New York museum, by contrast, fittingly became the New York state shrine to Roosevelt (along with a nature preserve called Roosevelt Island in the Potomac River in Washington, D.C., and Theodore Roosevelt National Park in the badlands of North Dakota). The Upper West Side museum was rededicated after Roosevelt’s death to honor the “scientific, educational,