American Museum of Natural History

The American Museum of Natural History stands on a site that was once known as Manhattan Square, a rugged and largely undeveloped patch of land designated as a park. Before the grand stone facades rose here, the city considered this area for other purposes, but the vision of a naturalist named Albert Smith Bickmore ultimately secured it for science. Bickmore, a student of the renowned Harvard zoologist Louis Agassiz, spent years lobbying wealthy New Yorkers and city officials to create an institution that could rival the great museums of Europe. His persistence paid off in eighteen sixty-nine when the state officially incorporated the museum, leading to a ceremony five years later where President Ulysses S. Grant laid the cornerstone for what would become one of the world's largest collections of scientific specimens.