Читать книгу The American Museum of Natural History and How It Got That Way - Colin Davey - Страница 15

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Manhattan Square

Let’s start by looking at what life was like in New York City in 1872, the year the museum was given its home on Eighth Avenue (now Central Park West) opposite Central Park, on a site then known as Manhattan Square (renamed Theodore Roosevelt Park in 1958).

The United States comprised only thirty-seven states. Ulysses S. Grant, the eighteenth president, sat in the White House just six years after the end of the Civil War, the excruciating conflict that had made the former general a household name.

New York City consisted only of Manhattan. The boroughs beyond would not become part of the larger metropolis until 1898. Although construction had begun on the Brooklyn Bridge, it would not open for more than a decade. And even after thirteen years of construction, Central Park itself was still not quite complete. According to the New York historians Robert A. M. Stern, Thomas Mellins, and David Fishman, “though by 1865 New York was the nation’s largest city, it was still provincial by international standards.”¹

Nor did Manhattan Square seem an ideal site for such an ambitious project. In his autobiography, Albert S. Bickmore, the museum’s founder, wrote, “The first time I visited the square it seemed an almost hopeless task that we were undertaking” because the terrain was so forbidding, dotted with high rocky hills, and the location so desolate.² To someone familiar with the flat, manicured grounds on which the museum sits today, the square would hardly be recognizable. The museum geologist Louis Gratacap described “a rugged, disconsolate tract of ground … where the gneiss ledges protruded their weathered shapes … filled with stagnant pools.”³

1870 map of Manhattan Square’s topography, with the current American Museum of Natural History floor plan as an overlay.

Source: First annual report of the BCDPP (1871), 276.

Albert Bickmore: “The first time I visited the square it seemed an almost hopeless task that we were undertaking…. There was a high hill at the north east corner [a] … in the north west corner another hill of solid rock rose much higher than the elevated railroad station, which now stands in its place … [The Columbus Avenue El train to which he refers no longer exists] In the southern and central part of the square [b], just where the first section of our building was to be erected, was a third hill, whose crest rose as high as the ceiling of our present Hall of Birds,” at the time on the second floor (“Autobiography,” 2:29–30).

[c] Hayden Planetarium/Rose Center for earth and space. Note the lake.

And the site was also far from the masses that Bickmore hoped to attract. The adjoining neighborhoods of the Upper East and West Sides were largely undeveloped and unpopulated, with most of the city’s residents living below Fifty-Ninth Street, Central Park’s southern boundary. During Bickmore’s first visit, he recalled, his “only companions were scores of goats,” adding, “Only the temporary shanties of squatters could be seen on the north, except two or three small and cheap houses half way between Eighth and Ninth Avenues. On the west were only shanties perched on the rough rocks, and south of us there was no building near.”⁴ Even a decade later, when the famous Dakota was rising nearby, it was suggested that the apartment building was so named because Manhattan’s Upper West Side seemed as remote as America’s Dakota Territory, soon to become the states of North and South Dakota.

The Growth of Manhattan and the Creation of Central Park

Nonetheless, the early history of New York City was one of relentless northward expansion. From the time of the original Dutch settlement in 1624 to the Revolutionary War in 1776, the streets of New York occupied the southernmost sliver of Manhattan Island, scarcely stretching above Wall Street. The following decades would witness a steady northward expansion, and by 1811 the streets extended roughly to Greenwich Village, covering about a fifth of the island. Because expansion was haphazard, the resulting street organization was chaotic, and it remains so to this day in Lower Manhattan.

Manhattan Square in 1811, from “Map of the city of New York and island of Manhattan, as laid out by the commissioners appointed by the legislature, April 3d, 1807.”

Source: Geography and Map Division, Library of Congress.

To rectify this, the city commissioners developed a plan, adopted in 1811, intended to guide the city’s inevitable northward growth. The plan organized the undeveloped portion of the island into an orderly grid of rectangular blocks reaching north all the way to 155th Street. Over the next century, Manhattan developed largely as envisioned by the 1811 plan, with one major exception—the addition of Central Park.

The commissioners saw no need for a major public park, and more than four decades would pass before Central Park would be added to the cityscape. However, the plan did include several small “squares,” including Manhattan Square,⁵ and as a result, the future home of the American Museum existed long before the idea of Central Park was conceived.⁶

One of the earliest calls for a major public park for the city came in 1844 from William Cullen Bryant, the lawyer, poet, and editor of the New York Evening Post: “Commerce is devouring inch by inch the coast of the island,” Bryant wrote in an editorial, “and if we would rescue any part of it for health and recreation it must be done now. All large cities have their extensive public ground and gardens, Madrid, and Mexico their Alamedas, London its Regent’s Park, Paris its Champs Elysées, and Vienna its Prater.”⁷ As the New York Times architecture critic Paul Goldberger would point out a century and a half later, “New York, it was said in the 1840s … had nothing in the way of public open space to compare with the great cities of Europe, and if the city was truly to become the international metropolis it took pleasure in seeing itself as, something had to be done.”⁸

The movement gathered steam, and on July 21, 1853, the New York State Legislature passed the Central Park Act, authorizing the city to buy the 778 acres bounded by Fifty-Ninth Street on the south, 106th Street on the north (later extended to 110th Street), Eighth Avenue on the west, and Fifth Avenue on the east.⁹

Andrew Haswell Green and the Board of Commissioners of Central Park

Nearly four years later, on April 17, 1857, the State Legislature established the Board of Commissioners of Central Park and appointed eleven men to the board, among them an exceptionally civic-minded New Yorker named Andrew Haswell Green.¹⁰

Green, a lawyer, was a protégé of the prominent Democratic politician Samuel J. Tilden.¹¹ Green’s career in public office began in November 1854, when he was elected to New York City’s Board of Education, serving from 1855 to 1860, a period that overlapped with his time as a commissioner of Central Park. In 1856, he was elected president of the Board of Education and was reelected the following year. In 1858, he declined to seek or accept the presidency again.¹²

Although Green had accepted the position of Central Park commissioner reluctantly,¹³ he quickly became the group’s most active member.¹⁴ Within two months of joining the body, he became its first treasurer, and on May 10, 1858, while also serving as treasurer, he became president.¹⁵

One of the commission’s first acts was to hold a design competition for the park. There were thirty-three submissions, and on April 28, 1858, the commission chose as the winner the “Greensward plan” of Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux. Both men already had history with Central Park. Olmsted had become the park’s superintendent the previous autumn, and Vaux had been instrumental in the decision to hold a design competition in the first place.¹⁶

On September 15, 1859, the Central Park Commission created the position of comptroller/treasurer, the group’s only paid position and one earmarked specifically for Green. At that point, he gave up his law practice to focus on the park, in the process taking control over every aspect of its construction and day-to-day operations.¹⁷ As Green rose through the ranks, he developed a reputation as an austere, incorruptible, and persuasive public servant. He maintained an active interest in education for the rest of his life, and it showed in his vision for Central Park.¹⁸

Early Plans for Museums and Educational Institutions in the Park

Park planners had intended to include museums and other educational institutions in the new park even before the park’s location was selected. In fact, one factor in the selection of Central Park’s location was the possibility that it could house institutions of this type.

On January 2, 1852, a special committee released a report comparing the merits of two sites for a public park: Central Park and an area near the East River known as Jones Park.¹⁹ One point in Central Park’s favor, the committee concluded, was that the “grounds admit numerous adaptations for ornamental or scientific purposes (as the erection of observatories, or museums, or the formation of a botanic garden, and various other objects), for which ‘Jones’ Wood’ would be too small, and, by reason of its proximity to the river, ill adapted.”²⁰

The specifications for the Central Park design competition had required “at least one institution of cultural uplift or practical knowledge.”²¹ Four of the submissions had included a museum in the park, and two had featured a zoo.²² The winning Greensward plan included a museum but no zoo.²³

The Greensward plan was among several submissions that identified the Arsenal, located at Sixty-Fourth Street facing Fifth Avenue and one of the few structures that predated the park, as a potential home for a museum or zoo. Built by the state between 1847 and 1851 to store munitions, the Arsenal still stands today, serving as headquarters for the New York City Department of Parks and where, until recently, the original Greensward plan was on display.

On April 15, 1859, the State Legislature passed an act that provided for the establishment of “museums, zoological or other gardens, collections of natural history, observatories, or works of art” in the park.²⁴ The Central Park Commission’s third annual report, published in January 1860, reflected this intent, noting the public’s desire for such institutions.²⁵ The report, however, “deemed it proper that the means for their establishment, maintenance and arrangement should be derived from private sources.”²⁶ The legend to the map that accompanied the report suggested that the Arsenal be altered to accommodate a museum.²⁷

Throughout the 1860s, Green and his fellow commissioners focused on bringing to the park both America’s first zoo and a museum in which the New-York Historical Society, one of the city’s venerable cultural institutions, could display its collections.

The Central Park Zoo

The modern zoo emerged in the early nineteenth century in London, Paris, and Dublin. But by 1859 America still had no such institutions. The Philadelphia Zoo, considered by some to be America’s first zoo, was chartered in 1859, but its opening was delayed until 1874 because of the Civil War. Through the early 1860s, Green, along with the park commissioners and the newly formed American Zoological and Botanical Society, strove to create the first American zoo and locate it in Central Park.²⁸

In 1860, Olmsted recommended setting aside an area for this purpose on the east side of the park between Seventy-Third and Eighty-Sixth Streets. This site was selected because structures there would not encroach on Vaux and Olmsted’s pastoral vision for the park, being isolated from the park proper by two reservoirs.²⁹ (At the time, it was bounded on the west by the Lower Reservoir, which was located where the Great Lawn now sits. The reservoir was converted to the Great Lawn in the 1930s, with the American Museum controversially involved in the process.) But by 1864, Olmsted and Vaux had become deeply opposed to locating a zoo in the main body of the park.³⁰

Olmsted & Vaux’s design for the proposed zoo on Manhattan Square.

Source: Tenth annual BCCP report (1866), 42.

On April 23, 1864, the State Legislature passed an act annexing Manhattan Square to Central Park and giving the park commissioners the power to establish a botanical and zoological garden. Olmsted and Vaux promptly started drawing up plans for locating a zoo on the site,³¹ and in 1868 work began on the foundation and enclosing walls.³² But even as officials argued about where and how to create the zoo, an ad hoc zoo started forming under their noses, thanks to donated animals. In 1865, the park commissioners placed the menagerie by the Arsenal, where the Central Park Zoo has remained in various incarnations to this day.³³

The New-York Historical Society

Throughout the 1860s, it appeared that there would be a New-York Historical Society museum in Central Park. The Historical Society, founded in 1804, housed the city’s only public art museum, but it no longer had room for its collections. In 1860, the society expressed interest in establishing a museum of antiquities and science in the park, along with an art gallery.³⁴

In 1862, the park commissioners indicated in their fifth annual report that the Historical Society’s organization, reputation, and collections “would add greatly to the attractions and utility of the park … perhaps on a plan somewhat similar to that of the British Museum.”³⁵ On March 25 of that year, the State Legislature passed an act authorizing the Historical Society to use the Arsenal and adjoining grounds as deemed necessary by the park commissioners, with any building expense to be paid by the society.³⁶

By 1868, the park commissioners and the Historical Society had thought better of the Arsenal as a location for the society’s museum.³⁷ Instead they selected the eastern portion of Central Park between Eighty-First and Eighty-Fourth Streets facing Fifth Avenue, the site of today’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.³⁸ This was part of the site that Olmsted had nominated for a zoo in 1860. Originally a playground in the Greensward plan,³⁹ the area was now fenced in for a deer park.⁴⁰ The new site was approved by the State Legislature on April 29 of that year.⁴¹

In 1869, partly for reasons of cost, the Historical Society’s project fell through.⁴² According to the Central Park Commission’s 1869 annual report, “The Board has not been advised of any progress by the New-York Historical Society toward establishing a Museum of Natural History and Gallery of Art, as authorized several years since by an Act of the Legislature.”⁴³

On May 5 of that year, the State Legislature passed an act authorizing the park commissioners to erect in the park a “Meteorological and Astronomical Observatory, and a Museum of Natural History and a Gallery of Art.” The act did not name any specific location or institution. And unlike the earlier acts, which had required the Historical Society to pay building expenses, this one allowed the Central Park Commission to cover these costs.⁴⁴

The map that accompanied the commission’s 1869 annual report showed a large complex, designed by Calvert Vaux and assistant Central Park architect Jacob Wrey Mould, on the site previously reserved for the Historical Society and generically labeled “Proposed Art Museum and Hall.”⁴⁵

The Historical Society bought its permanent site on Central Park West across Seventy-Seventh Street from the American Museum in 1891. Construction began in 1902, and the opening took place in 1908.⁴⁶

The Paleozoic Museum

As debate over the Historical Society was going on, Green and his fellow commissioners took on a new educational project for Central Park: the Paleozoic Museum, a set of life-size models of dinosaurs from the American continent, similar to those developed for the Sydenham Crystal Palace in London by Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins and Richard Owen, the superintendent of the natural history department of the British Museum, who first coined the word “dinosaur.” By this time, Hawkins and his models had developed an international reputation, and he had become a prominent lecturer and illustrator. In March 1868, he arrived in New York City for a lecture circuit that included the Lyceum of Natural History and Cooper Union.⁴⁷

On May 2 of that year, Green wrote to Hawkins on behalf of the Central Park Commission, asking him to help with the project. Hawkins promptly replied that he was ready to start immediately.⁴⁸

Over the next seven months, Hawkins threw himself fully into the task. He began by making a thorough study of the available fossils found in America. He traveled to Washington, New Brunswick, Albany, New Haven, Philadelphia, and Chicago before settling down to work at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia. There he found two of the nation’s preeminent paleontologists—Joseph Leidy and Edward Drinker Cope—along with the first nearly complete dinosaur skeleton ever found, a Hadrosaurus (“powerful lizard”). The Hadrosaurus had been discovered in Haddonfield, New Jersey, in 1858, several years after the opening of the Sydenham Crystal Palace, and it was Leidy who both supervised its excavation and named the beast.

While at Philadelphia, Hawkins created the world’s first dinosaur mount, a dinosaur skeleton assembled into a lifelike posture for public display (a technique later perfected at the American Museum), with the Hadrosaurus as the subject. The result was three stories tall. This process included drawing and describing every bone fragment, scrubbing off rock debris that was still clinging to many of them, modeling missing bones, devising a way to make molds and create casts of the bones, mounting the actual bones and casts of the modeled missing bones, and shipping the molds to Central Park for his work there—all at his own expense. He also did substantial work with other fossilized specimens. As Edwin Colbert, curator of vertebrate paleontology at the American Museum for forty years, summed up Hawkins’s achievements: “He must truly have been a Victorian Hercules performing prodigious labors with fossils, plaster, and clay.”⁴⁹

On December 4, Hawkins returned to New York, and three days later he took possession of the upper floor of the Arsenal as a temporary studio. By the following March, he had created a large model of a Hadrosaurus in a recumbent position.⁵⁰ As Hawkins was starting work in the Arsenal building, the nascent stirrings of the American Museum were taking place.

Albert S. Bickmore

The American Museum of Natural History was the brainchild of the naturalist Albert S. Bickmore. Born on March 1, 1839, Bickmore developed a love of natural history as a child growing up on the coast of Maine. After graduating from Dartmouth in 1860, he began studying under Professor Louis Agassiz at Agassiz’s Museum of Comparative Zoology in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

One day in 1861, while working at the museum, Bickmore had the opportunity to talk to Dr. Henry Wentworth Acland, who just that year had founded the Oxford University Museum. In his autobiography, Bickmore recalls asking Acland, “Does it seem strange to you, sir, that Agassiz, our great teacher, should have located his museum of natural history out here in Cambridge, while in Europe the institutions of this character are placed in the political or monetary capitals of the several empires, as London, Paris, Berlin, Vienna?” He went on: “Now New York is our city of greatest wealth and therefore probably the best location for the future museum of natural history for our whole land.” Acland’s response: “My young friend, that is a grand thought.” Bickmore recalled, “I at once determined that I would work for nothing else by day and dream of nothing else by night until I had, at least in some degree, aided in establishing a museum of natural history upon Manhattan Island.” However, it would be years before he would realize his dream.

After an expedition to Bermuda in the summer of 1862 to collect tropical marine life specimens for P. T. Barnum’s museum, Bickmore volunteered to fight as a Union soldier in the Civil War. After the war, he raised money for an expedition to the Far East, an undertaking that would last from 1865 to 1867.⁵¹ Before his departure, Bickmore made a stopover in New York City, where he lobbied wealthy New Yorkers on behalf of the museum he hoped to create. One of the men he visited was William E. Dodge Jr., a prominent New York businessman and philanthropist with whom Bickmore maintained a correspondence throughout his expedition.⁵² By the time he departed, Bickmore had also designed the layout of the future museum. He took this design with him so that when he passed through London toward the end of his journey, he could show it to Richard Owen. Bickmore was gratified to receive Owen’s approval.⁵³

“Immediately on my arrival back to New York, in December 1867, from three years travel in the Orient, and over Siberia,” Bickmore recalled in his autobiography, “I called upon the gentlemen, who had previously expressed the generous hope that when my proposed journeys were completed … favorable conditions would then exist for founding” the museum.⁵⁴ For Bickmore, the following year would be occupied by the writing and publication of his book Travels in the East Indian Archipelago and campaigning for the museum, which consisted of rounding up wealthy and influential New Yorkers to lend their political support and contribute money for the purchase of collections.

William Dodge Jr. was unable to participate actively at that time because he was occupied with the construction of a YMCA building. He did, however, introduce Bickmore to Theodore Roosevelt Sr., a prominent New York City businessman and philanthropist, whose namesake son would be the twenty-sixth American president. Roosevelt joined the cause and recommended inviting a young lawyer named Joseph H. Choate to help with the legal work.⁵⁵

On March 2, 1868, P. T. Barnum’s American Museum was destroyed in a fire.⁵⁶ This resulted in a March 18 article in the New York Times that asked, “Why cannot we now have a great popular museum in New York, without any ‘humbug’ about it?” The article continued: “In respect to this type of thing, our city is, and always has been, a marvel of poverty. Compared with any one of the hundred larger cities of Europe, we are beneath contempt.”⁵⁷

Bickmore’s year-long campaign for just such an institution culminated in a letter that he sent to the Central Park Commission on December 30: “A number of gentlemen have long desired that a great Museum of Natural History should be established in Central Park,” the letter began, “and having now the opportunity of securing a rare and very valuable collection as a nucleus of such Museum, the undersigned wish to enquire if you are disposed to provide for its reception and development.” The letter was signed by nearly a score of notable New Yorkers, among them J. Pierpont Morgan, the department-store magnate Alexander T. Stewart, Theodore Roosevelt Sr., museum president John David Wolfe, and the future presidents Robert L. Stuart and Morris K. Jesup. Two weeks later, on January 13, 1869, the group received an enthusiastic reply from Commissioner Green in support of the project.⁵⁸

Having secured the support of New York’s aristocracy, Green, and the Central Park Commission, Bickmore’s next step was to get the State Legislature to pass a law officially establishing the museum. He and Joseph Choate prepared a draft of a charter to present to the museum’s newly formed board of trustees at a meeting on February 26. This meeting was held at the home of John David Wolfe, by now the museum’s first president. The trustees approved the draft unchanged.

The name “American Museum of Natural History” makes its first appearance in this document.⁵⁹ Bickmore wanted a name that echoed that of the British Museum, something that, as he put it, “will indicate our expectation that our museum will ultimately become the leading institution of its kind in our country.”⁶⁰ Bickmore also paid homage to the British Museum in the title he chose for himself—superintendent—which was Richard Owen’s title at the British Museum.⁶¹

Boss Tweed

It quickly became apparent to all parties that to get a law passed by the State Legislature, it would be necessary to secure the support of William Magear Tweed, also known as Boss Tweed, “whose influence was said to be growing so rapidly,” Bickmore wrote in his autobiography, “that it promised soon to become of paramount importance upon the fate of all laws relating to our metropolis.”⁶² And Choate would later recall: “When it had finally been resolved to establish the American Museum, the first thing was to get a charter from the state, and I went in company with the late William E. Dodge to Albany to consult with members of the Legislature about granting it. To our surprise we found that the matter of granting us a charter depended upon the decision of William M. Tweed, who was then practically in supreme control of the Legislature.”⁶³

Bickmore’s autobiography continues: “A friend of Mr. Samuel J. Tilden procured from him a favorable letter of introduction for me to this senator, and later when I learned the exact situation, I realized that the letter was the one credential I needed to insure the success of my mission.”⁶⁴ Tilden, Green’s longtime friend and mentor, was chairman of the state Democratic Party at the time.

Tweed had begun his career as a chair maker, brush maker, bookkeeper, and firefighter. He then became the foreman of the Americus “Big Six” firefighting company and leveraged this position into a political career. He served in Congress from 1853 to 1855, after which he took control of New York’s notorious and powerful Tammany Hall political machine, the muscle of the local Democratic Party, and was elected its chairman in 1863.⁶⁵

Tweed’s rise to power continued in meteoric fashion through political skill, graft, and other forms of corruption. In 1867, he was elected to the New York State Senate. And in 1868, the year Bickmore was campaigning for the museum, Tweed’s grip on power tightened further as his handpicked Tammany Hall cronies (who became known as the “Tweed Ring,” or just the “Ring”) attained positions of power. These included John Hoffman and Abraham Oakey Hall, who were elected governor and mayor of New York City, respectively, to be sworn in on January 1, 1869. Hoffman was Tweed’s previous handpicked mayor. The voting irregularities in the election were so blatant that a special congressional select committee concluded that the 1868 election had been grossly manipulated, with the total vote count being 8 percent greater than the number of possible voters.⁶⁶

It was probably in late March or early April 1869 that Bickmore made his pitch to Tweed in the senator’s Albany hotel room.⁶⁷ Bickmore found the political boss to be “a man of portly dimensions and comfortably seated in a large arm chair.”

Bickmore: “Senator I am honored by your friend Mr. Samuel J. Tilden, with this letter, and I have also these other letters from other leading citizens in New York City.”

Tweed: “Well, well; what can I do for Mr. Tilden?”

Bickmore: “These gentlemen, Senator, whose names are on this paper, have asked me to state to you that they desire to found a Museum of Natural History in New York, and if possible on Central Park …”

Tweed: “All right, my young friend, I will see your bill safely through.”⁶⁸

Bickmore remained in Albany to keep an eye on matters as the bill establishing the museum worked its way through the legislature and its ultimate signing into law by Governor Hoffman on April 6. It was formally accepted by the trustees at a meeting at Theodore Roosevelt’s residence on April 8. The final version was unchanged from the draft that Bickmore and Choate had presented to the museum’s trustees.⁶⁹

On November 23, 1869, a meeting took place at the Union League Club that led to the founding of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This meeting was the result of the activism of many prominent New Yorkers, including William Cullen Bryant; John Taylor Johnston, who became the institution’s first president; the Central Park commissioners Green and Stebbins; Central Park’s designers Vaux and Olmsted; the New-York Historical Society’s William J. Hoppin; and several supporters of the American Museum, including William E. Dodge Jr., Joseph H. Choate, and Alexander T. Stewart. Within five months, on April 13, 1870, the museum was formally established by an act passed by the State Legislature.⁷⁰

The timing was fortunate. Plans for the Historical Society’s museum had just fallen through given its cost, thus freeing up the site previously reserved for that institution, and the State Legislature had just agreed to allow the Central Park Commission to pay for the building of a museum. (This was not lost on the Historical Society, whose president would write in 1954 that his institution was “instrumental in fostering the establishment of its great competitor across the park.”)⁷¹

As of the second half of 1869, the Central Park Commission had not yet decided on a site for the Paleozoic Museum. So, the work was put on hold, and Hawkins was asked to make designs and scale models for the zoo planned for Manhattan Square.

In January 1870, a site for the Paleozoic Museum was selected, and excavation and foundation work began for a building designed by Olmsted and Vaux working with Hawkins.⁷² The location was inside the park, alongside Eighth Avenue (Central Park West), starting around Sixty-Third Street and extending a half-block to the north.⁷³ According to the paleontologist Edwin Colbert, “Unfortunately no drawings of what the building was to look like on the outside have come to light, but a lithograph published in the Thirteenth Annual Report of the Board of Commissioners gives us an idea.” Colbert added, “It is evident that the influence of the two Crystal Palaces dominated the thinking.”⁷⁴

On December 23, 1869, W.A. Haines, chairman of the executive committee of the American Museum, wrote to Commissioner Green, by now also a member of the museum’s executive committee, requesting use of the upper two stories of the Arsenal. Green replied approving the request on January 21, 1870.⁷⁵

Plans for the development of Central Park, showing the Paleozoic Museum, Manhattan Square, and proposed Art Museum site.

Source: Thirteenth annual BCCP report (1869), 28.

Hawkins described what happened next:

As the Arsenal was required for the Museum of Natural History, it became necessary that my large model and the moulds should be removed, and a small temporary shed was built with a forge…. I now had hopes for the commencement of my real proper work, for the comptroller [Green] promised me that the platform on which alone I could erect my models, might reasonably be expected from week to week. But sundry administrative-changes were then taking place which appeared to postpone the advancement of this platform … until in the month of May, the total change of the commissioners again presented a barrier to the hoped-for commencement of my own legitimate work.⁷⁶

The change in commissioners that Hawkins referred to stemmed from a power grab by Boss Tweed that would shake up New York city and state politics, including Central Park and all the projects associated with it.

The Tweed Charter

On April 5, 1870, a bill that became known as the Tweed Charter was passed into law. Tweed pushed through the legislation under the pretext of establishing home rule for New York City, an issue that united city residents who had grown resentful of the State Legislature’s control over their local affairs. But hidden in the bill was language that further tightened Tweed’s grip on power.

The charter abolished the state-controlled commission that had been steadily building Central Park since 1857 and replaced it with a new city-controlled Department of Public Parks—with its own board, ready to be packed with members of the Ring. The department’s jurisdiction covered not just Central Park but all the city’s parks.

In moving decision-making powers from Albany to Manhattan and in the process stripping powers from the city’s elected aldermen, the legislation specifically bestowed those powers on a Board of Apportionment that consisted of the mayor, the comptroller, the president of the Department of Public Parks, and the commissioner of public works.

The Board of Apportionment was filled as follows: The mayor was Tweed’s handpicked crony, Oakey Hall. The comptroller since 1867 was Tweed’s longtime crony Richard B. Connolly. Shortly after the bill was signed, Mayor Hall appointed Tweed’s longtime right-hand man, Peter “Brains” Sweeny, president of the new Department of Public Parks. And the man Mayor Hall appointed commissioner of public works was Tweed himself.

Furthermore, the bill was packed with language that would allow the Ring to maintain their hold on power. For example, once in place, board appointees could not be fired, even by the mayor, short of an act of impeachment.⁷⁷

During the lead-up to the vote on the bill, Samuel Tilden stood out as the bill’s most outspoken opponent, arguing that the bill bestowed too much unaccountable power on a small number of public officials. The day before the vote, Tilden spoke at length, including a contentious exchange with Tweed. Green spoke as well, urging that the management of Central Park not change hands.⁷⁸

The Park and Its Museums under the Ring

On April 20, 1870, the Central Park Commission was officially disbanded and replaced by the Board of Commissioners of the Department of Public Parks, which met for the first time on May 3.⁷⁹ Green was allowed to remain on the board because removing him would have been politically untenable. But the top two posts, president and vice president, went to Tweed loyalists. Sweeny was named president, and the former judge Henry Hilton became vice president and treasurer. As it happened, Hilton was the lawyer, friend, and right-hand man of Alexander T. Stewart, a supporter of both the American Museum and the Metropolitan Museum.⁸⁰

Green’s relations with his new fellow commissioners can be seen in his blistering introduction to the department’s first annual report, in which he wrote: “As the name of the undersigned appears on its title page, he deems it due to the public, to his colleagues of the earlier Board, and to himself, to submit this brief disavowal of responsibility for this report, which he never saw till it was in print.”⁸¹

Over the next year, the board of the American Museum had two main tasks: preparing for its grand opening in the Arsenal and working toward a permanent home. Within the first month of the new regime, the museum’s board contacted the new Department of Public Parks to verify that the previous arrangements for the use of the Arsenal would be honored. The board was gratified to receive the department’s full cooperation, with Commissioner Hilton personally arranging the construction of cases and suggesting improvements and modifications to the building, including workrooms for the curators.⁸²

One day, as Bickmore and the museum curators were preparing the exhibits, the elder Theodore Roosevelt brought his twelve-year-old son to the Arsenal. This visit would mark the beginning of the future president’s lifelong association with the museum.⁸³

On April 27, 1871, the museum held its opening reception in the Arsenal building.⁸⁴ By August, the exhibits had expanded into the octagons at the corners of the Arsenal.⁸⁵ However, the Arsenal was always intended to be a temporary home for the museum. On November 14, 1870, as the Arsenal was still being prepared for the museum’s grand opening, its board members had begun plans to obtain a permanent building. The timing was fortunate, since the Metropolitan Museum, which had been established earlier in the year and shared many supporters with the American Museum, was also seeking a home. In February 1871, the two museums combined forces to petition the State Legislature for land and buildings. They succeeded in gathering forty thousand signatures, including those of some of New York’s wealthiest and most influential citizens.

And so once again, it became necessary to secure the support of Boss Tweed in Albany. Four decades later, George F. Comfort, a member of the board of the Metropolitan Museum, recalled that he “and a representative of the Museum of Natural History [Bickmore] took the petition to Albany. Tweed and Sweeny were in power then.” Tweed looked at the petition a moment, and, Comfort continued, “instantly, with that celerity of action for which he was noted, he took it to a room, and said: ‘You will see Mr. Sweeny. He will take charge of this.’ Then Mr. Sweeny took the paper and … when he saw the names attached to it … as I watched his face, there was not the quiver of an eye, or twitch of the muscles, but he turned quickly and said: ‘Please inform these gentlemen that we are the servants of the people.’”⁸⁶

By this point, the Department of Public Parks had already determined that Manhattan Square was inadequate for a zoo because its terrain presented insurmountable drainage and sewage problems.⁸⁷ On April 5, 1871, three weeks before the American Museum’s grand opening in the Arsenal, the State Legislature passed an act authorizing the park commissioners to construct “in and upon that portion of the Central Park, formerly known as Manhattan Square, or any other public park … suitable fireproof buildings” for the Metropolitan Museum and the American Museum.⁸⁸ The need for fireproof buildings reflected the fact that the Lyceum of Natural History and P. T. Barnum’s American Museum had recently been destroyed by fire.⁸⁹

Tweed and his cronies were far less kind to Professor Hawkins and his Paleozoic Museum. Through 1870, Hawkins continued to get assignments unrelated to the Paleozoic Museum. Fearing that his project was in danger, on September 5 he proposed an alternative plan, incorporating an aquarium into the structure.⁹⁰ Despite this, on December 13, the Department of Public Parks resolved to discontinue the Paleozoic Museum and directed “that the present foundation be covered over; and that the site, as far as possible, be converted to the growth of grass and trees.”⁹¹

The commissioners justified the cancellation by noting that the excavations and foundation had already cost $30,000 and that an additional $300,000 would be needed to finish the building, “which was deemed too great a sum to expend upon a building devoted wholly to paleontology—a science which, however interesting, is yet so imperfect as not to justify so great a public expense for illustrating it; certainly not until the living animals in [the] charge of the Department have been properly cared for.” The commissioners also feared that the structure would block the view of the park for residents of Central Park West.⁹²

Hawkins nonetheless campaigned to revive the project. On March 6, 1871, he brought his case to a meeting of the Lyceum of Natural History where Commissioner Green was in the audience, resulting in the Lyceum passing a resolution in support of Hawkins and his project. The next day, the New York Times ran an article about the meeting, including sarcastic remarks by a Mr. E. G. Squier that the only way the museum could be successful “was to elect Tweed as president, Sweeny as Treasurer, and the rest of them as directors” and adding that “the idea of his [Hawkins] trying to get up a museum in this City without a corresponding scheme for dividing the profits was an absurdity.” A Dr. Walz “objected to the manner in which the last gentleman had spoken, having a tendency to do more harm than good to their project.”⁹³

Dr. Walz’s remarks proved prophetic. On May 3, 1871, under orders of Commissioner Hilton, all of Hawkins’s work of the previous two and a half years was destroyed by sledgehammers and buried. The shattered items included two gigantic dinosaur models, molds, sketches, and sketch models.⁹⁴

In a few months, the Tweed Ring’s downfall would begin. By the end of the year, Tweed would be arrested, and Sweeny and Hilton would resign from the Department of Public Parks in disgrace. But it was too late for the Paleozoic Museum.

The Fall of the Ring

Although the political cartoonist Thomas Nast had been skewering Tweed and the Ring in Harper’s Weekly since 1867 and the New York Times had begun an editorial campaign against them in late 1870, these efforts had scant effect on the Ring’s continuous rise to power.

The Ring’s downfall began abruptly when James O’Brien, a former sheriff and disgruntled former crony, got his hands on documents from Comptroller Connolly’s office showing massive theft by the Ring through overcharges, kickbacks, fraud, and money laundering. O’Brien handed the evidence to the New York Times on July 18, 1871. Starting the next day and continuing daily through July 29, the newspaper published devastating exposés.⁹⁵ The reporting ignited a firestorm of anti-Ring sentiment. The drama mounted when, on the evening of Saturday, September 9, there was a mysterious burglary of the comptroller’s office. The only thing stolen was evidence relating to the New York Times articles, suggesting a cover-up.

As the calls for reform mounted, Samuel Tilden remained quiet publicly. But when an opportunity to deliver a fatal blow to the Ring presented itself, he pounced. Comptroller Connolly must have seemed the obvious choice for fall guy, and Mayor Hall began calling for his resignation. But Connolly had other ideas. He decided to hire a lawyer and throw in with the reformers. The former mayor William Havemeyer suggested that Connolly hire the reformer Tilden to represent him.

On September 14, Tilden was surprised to receive a request from Connolly for an appointment. They met the next day, and after Connolly asked Tilden to represent him, Tilden made a counteroffer. He would not be Connolly’s lawyer, but he would help Connolly if he stayed in office and cooperated with the reformers. After Connolly left, Tilden hatched his plot. He found a provision in the Tweed Charter that allowed the comptroller to transfer his powers to a deputy, and no one could fire either man. And Tilden had just the person in mind for the position of the deputy who would become acting comptroller: his longtime friend and protégé, the comptroller of Central Park, Andrew Haswell Green.

That evening, the men had planned to meet again, but Connolly didn’t show up. Havemeyer rushed to Connolly’s residence and found him in a panic, ready to back out of the deal. But Havemeyer managed to buoy up Connolly’s courage. The next morning, September 15, Connolly, Tilden, Green, and Havemeyer met to execute the plan. By five o’clock that evening, Green had been sworn in as deputy and taken control as acting comptroller, and announcements had been sent to the newspapers. With this maneuver, Tilden and Green had quietly used Tweed’s own charter and Ring member against him to take control of the most powerful office in city government. Tweed and the other Ring members wouldn’t learn what happened until they read about it in the newspapers.⁹⁶

As city comptroller, Green had his work cut out for him. Between January 1869 and the summer of 1871, the city’s debt had had ballooned from $36 million to $97 million.⁹⁷ A $2.7 million interest payment was coming due in November, and the city coffers only contained $2.5 million.⁹⁸ Thousands of municipal employees, unpaid for weeks, were clamoring for their money.⁹⁹

On October 27, Tweed was arrested.¹⁰⁰ On October 31, Connolly resigned as comptroller, and on November 18, Green became the city’s permanent comptroller. On November 25, Connolly was arrested, shortly after which he jumped bail and fled the country.¹⁰¹ In November, Sweeny and Hilton resigned from the Department of Public Parks, and Sweeny fled to Paris.¹⁰² Green regained control of the Park Commission, and despite his awesome responsibilities as city comptroller, continued as park commissioner until May 1, 1873.¹⁰³

The Museums Get Their Homes

As late as February 5, 1872, the plan was for both the American Museum and Metropolitan Museum to be located in Manhattan Square, the site selected during the Tweed regime.¹⁰⁴ Acting under this understanding, representatives of both museums met with architects to prepare a set of recommendations, and it was determined that since the two museums had very different needs, the buildings should be designed independently.

After Green regained control of the Park Commission, the trustees of both museums and the park commissioners revisited the issue of the museums’ locations, holding meetings and site-inspection trips. The first site offered the American Museum was the site the Metropolitan Museum occupies today.¹⁰⁵ Also considered as a possible site for both museums was Reservoir Square on Forty-Second Street and Fifth Avenue, where the Main Branch of the New York Public Library and Bryant Park are now located. In fact, it was the unanimous choice of the Metropolitan Museum’s executive committee, given its centralized location in the developed portion of Manhattan, despite the limited space for expansion.¹⁰⁶

But the ultimate decision rested with Green, and on March 20, he offered a resolution, passed by the Park Commission, selecting the final sites for both institutions.¹⁰⁷ The Metropolitan Museum was placed on the site Green and the park commissioners had proposed in 1868 for an art museum, and Manhattan Square and the American Museum were finally united.

John David Wolfe, president of the American Museum, died May 17, 1872, just months after seeing his efforts to establish the museum come to fruition. He was replaced by Robert L. Stuart.

Epilogue: What Became of Them?

Here’s how life unfolded for some of the major players in this drama:

William Tweed spent the rest of his life in and out of jail. In 1875 he slipped past his guards and escaped to Spain, but the Spanish police recognized him and turned him in. He died in prison on April 12, 1878.

Richard Connolly spent the rest of his life in exile, dying in Marseilles in 1880 a broken man.¹⁰⁸

Peter Sweeny lived in exile in Paris until 1886, when he negotiated a deal allowing his return to the United States after paying $400,000 in exchange for being officially exonerated.¹⁰⁹ He lived the rest of his life in the shadow of the Tweed Ring, unsuccessfully trying to clear his name.¹¹⁰

From 1872 to 1876, Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins appealed unsuccessfully to the Park Commission for compensation for unpaid salary, expenses, interest, breach of contract, lost opportunities, and damage to his reputation.¹¹¹ In the meantime, he created a major dinosaur mural and Hadrosaurus reconstruction for Princeton University and continued to lecture around the country before retiring to England, where he died at the age of eighty-six.¹¹²

Samuel Tilden led the prosecution of the Tweed Ring and became governor of New York in 1875. In 1876, he ran against Rutherford B. Hayes for president, and although he won the popular vote, he lost in the Electoral College.

Andrew Haswell Green went on to become one of the most consequential, yet unsung, figures in New York City history. He remained city comptroller until 1876, after the city’s finances had been repaired. He helped found the New York Public Library, chartered in 1895, when, as an executor of Samuel Tilden’s estate, he arranged for the library bequeathed by Tilden to be combined with the existing Astor and Lenox Libraries. And he played a leading role in the founding of the Bronx Zoo (originally named the New York Zoological Park) in 1895. But perhaps Green’s most important contribution to the city’s history was his effort to unite Manhattan with the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island. Green first articulated the vision of a united New York City in 1868 (during the early stirrings of the American Museum), and he lobbied for the plan until it became a reality in 1898. For this achievement, he is known as the Father of New York City.