After a three-year overhaul, the American Museum of Natural History welcomes the public to its newly restored Theodore Roosevelt Memorial and Hall of North American Mammals.

John Russell Pope won the competition to design the American Museum of Natural History’s Central Park West facade. Photo: AMNH

This past Saturday, the American Museum of Natural History unveiled its newly restored Theodore Roosevelt Memorial and Hall of North American Mammals. The $40 million project included the restoration of the museum’s main entrance and grand main hall, as well as of its world-famous dioramas of animals in their natural settings.

Unlike Presidents such as Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln, whose monuments dot the National Mall in Washington, D.C., it was decided in 1924 that New York State would honor its most famous native son with a memorial at the American Museum of Natural History. The museum, which Roosevelt’s father helped found in 1920, has long had an association with the 26th President, an avid naturalist who was born and raised in New York City.

“Most Americans are familiar with Theodore Roosevelt’s legacy as President of the United States, but few fully appreciate his lifelong passion for conservation and the American wilderness,” says David Hurst Thomas, curator in the museum’s Division of Anthropology.

Roosevelt poses on a 1903 trip to Yosemite with naturalist John Muir.

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