With the growing collections of the Smithsonian Institution in need of more storage and display space at the turn of the twentieth century, Congress appropriated funds for the construction of a new museum in January 1903. Ground broke in 1904 north of the Smithsonian Castle. The building was designed by the architectural firm Hornblower & Marshall, with some adjustments quietly made during construction by Charles Follen McKim of McKim, Mead, and White. The Smithsonian website recounts that “[b]y August 11, 1909, the staff had begun to occupy the building and move the national collections which now totaled c. 10 million objects, using a horse-drawn cart. On March 17, 1910, the Museum opened to the public, although construction of the building was not completed until June 20, 1911.” At its start, the U.S. National Museum, as it was then known, “housed art, culture, history, and natural history collections.” Reorganization in the 1950s and 60s led to the creation of what today we call the National Museum of Natural History, which has the narrower focus of anthropological and natural history. Between the museum on the Mall and its support center in Suitland, Maryland, the National Museum of Natural History now boasts 126.5 million artifacts and specimens. Though I first visited with my family in July 2005 and again in July 2015, the photos on this page were all taken in 2024.
Posed center stage in the museum’s Rotunda is Henry, a 13-foot African elephant weighing 22,000 pounds. The bull was shot and killed in November 1955 by Hungarian hunter Josef J. Fénykövi. Per the Smithsonian, “Fénykövi sent images of the elephant to Dr. Remington Kellogg, Director of the United States National Museum, in 1958 to help the United States National Museum taxidermists to reconstruct the elephant to be prepared for exhibition in the Rotunda of the Natural History Building.” Henry’s hide has been displayed in the Rotunda since 1959. The museum website notes, “In 2015 Henry was carefully cleaned and patched with special hand-colored beeswax, and his platform was redesigned. The new platform includes an information desk and new info on African elephant ecology, the threat of poaching, and their place in geologic time. The new platform reveals the previously hidden, inlaid compass in the Rotunda floor.”
One of the standouts of the museum’s ornithological exhibit is Haliaeetus leucocephalus — the bald eagle. “This exhibit opened in 1923,” exposits its introductory text, “with the goal to display all of the species of birds that have been recorded within the boundaries of the District of Columbia.” It continues, “The nearly 500 specimens in these cases represent the bird species that breed here or pass through on their fall and spring migrations. Two species, the Carolina Parakeet and the Passenger Pigeon, are now extinct.” The placard for the bald eagle notes that the species is an “[u]ncommon resident in the Potomac River watershed, breeding from early February to mid-August.” Other displayed avians include the black vulture, shown to the left of the eagle.
Shabtis were funereal figurines carved in ancient Egypt. These two examples date to the New Kingdom 26th Dynasty, which lasted four hundred years, between 1500 and 1100 B.C.E. The shabti on the left is made of the ceramic faience, while the sculpture on the right was carved from turquoise. They were gifted to the Smithsonian by William L. Smith.
These are samples of crinoids, which are in the same phylum as starfish and sea cucumbers. The fossils shown here were recovered from midwestern states like Illinois, Indiana, and Iowa. Signage explains the different evolutionary paths crinoids took from one another. One kind in this case “evolved anal tubes and spines to deter parasites and predators such as snails and fish.” Crinoids grew to various heights so that they could access food at different levels above the sea floor.
Visitors can peer through large, glass windows into the FossiLab, where museum staff and volunteers unpack newly-acquired specimens and prepare them for paleontologists.
Giant ground sloths, like the one shown here, lived 126,000 to 11,700 years ago, when they went extinct. The skeleton from which this cast was made was discovered in Panama. The Smithsonian says that after the giant ground sloth’s extinction, “ecosystems greatly changed in their absence. Much like elephants today, the sloths may have helped ‘engineer’ their ecosystems by dispersing seeds and fertilizing the soil with their dung.”
Hokey smoke! I suspect that an NMNH curator was a fan of the cartoon Rocky and His Friends (later renamed The Bullwinkle Show) by Jay Ward and Bill Scott. It was during my family’s Independence Day visit in 2015 that I first noticed a Siberian flying squirrel positioned to be gliding directly above a stuffed moose in the Hall of Mammals. The Jay Ward Productions series, which was made from 1959 to 1964, starred June Foray as Rocky the Flying Squirrel, with Bullwinkle J. Moose vocalized by Bill Scott. The moose, which is native to Asia and Europe as well as North America, is the largest member of the deer family.
Other taxidermy animals in the Hall of Mammals include a leopard perched in a tree. The cat has a slain antelope draped over the limb, awaiting consumption. The Hall features 274 mammals.
Orangutans are one of my favorite animals. The one shown here is a Bornean orangutan, the largest of the three species of orangutans.
Our cute buddy here is the northern night monkey, or Aotus trivirgatus. According to the NMNH, “These quiet little monkeys are most active on moonlit nights, traveling through the upper layers of the forest. Because of their owl-like hoots and large eyes, these primates are sometimes called owl monkeys.” Northern night monkeys are indigenous to South America, north of the Amazon River.
The National Gem Collection contained 10,000 gems and 375,000 mineral specimens as of 2018. The best known is the Hope Diamond. The 45.52-carat stone originates from India and was gifted to the Smithsonian by jeweler Harry Winston, “connoisseur of diamonds,” in 1958. Signage beneath its rotating display explains that the Hope Diamond is “renowned for its flawless clarity, rare deep blue color, and eventful history.” To learn about its extensive past, including its ownership by France’s “Sun King,” Louis XIV, click here.
The contents of the National Gem Collection include the Whitney Flame Topaz, gifted by philanthropist Carolyn Wright Whitney in 2018. The stone originates from Ouro Preto, Brazil, and is 48.86 carats. Signage at the Smithsonian calls it “one of the finest imperial, or ‘precious,’ topaz gems in the world. It is notable for its large size and rare, fiery red color, caused by trace quantities of chromium.” Imperial topaz generally has an orange-gold color.
Outside the museum, along Madison Drive NW, the museum showcases some very old items. To the right side of the staircase, as you exit, is a hunk of banded iron ore from the Precambrian Period, 2,250 million years ago. On the left side of the stairs are segments of Arizonan petrified wood, shown here, from the Triassic Period 200 million years past.
Sources Consulted and Further Reading
National Museum of Natural History. “African Bush Elephant.” Accessed July 4, 2024. https://naturalhistory.si.edu/exhibits/african-bush-elephant.
National Museum of Natural History. “FossiLab.” Accessed July 29, 2024. https://naturalhistory.si.edu/exhibits/david-h-koch-hall-fossils-deep-time/fossilab.
Smithsonian. “A Brief History of NMNH.” Accessed July 9, 2024. https://naturalhistory.si.edu/about/brief-history-nmnh.
Smithsonian. “History of the Hope Diamond.” Accessed July 29, 2024. https://www.si.edu/spotlight/hope-diamond/history.
Smithsonian. “Smithsonian Receives Rare Topaz for the National Gem Collection.” September 20, 2018. https://www.si.edu/newsdesk/releases/smithsonian-receives-rare-topaz-national-gem-collection.
Smithsonian Institution Archives. “Josef J. Fénykövi Sitting on the Recently Killed Elephant.” Accessed July 4, 2024. https://siarchives.si.edu/collections/siris_sic_12339.
