However, the old Palace of Fine Arts was rapidly deteriorating by , and the museum decided it was time for a new location. Plans for a new building were contained within the Burnham Plan for Chicago and were controversial from the start, the museum points out. Legendary planner Daniel Burnham had initially proposed for the museum to be built in the middle of Grant Park near what was then Congress Parkway — around the eventual site of Buckingham Fountain. But plans to build on the park were met with swift backlash, and a fight over the proposed site went all the way to the Illinois Supreme Court, the museum points out.
Initially, a new plan was launched to rebuild the museum in Jackson Park. But the plan was changed again when the South Park Commission acquired land just south of Roosevelt Road on the edge of Grant Park — where it was agreed the new Field Museum would be constructed.
Construction on the new building started in July Plans were altered in so the not-yet-finished museum could operate as a hospital during World War I, but the government canceled the contract before any soldiers were treated there, the museum pointed out. It took a year to build the foundation alone, and the foundation extends down 95 feet in some spots, the museum pointed out.
But the most instrumental figure in making the dream of the museum a reality was Marshall Field, a local business magnate. Edward E. Their donations helped purchase the first collections of what would soon become the Columbian Museum of Chicago. The state of Illinois approved the charter that officially created the Columbian Museum of Chicago—which was quickly renamed the Field Columbian Museum to honor its first major benefactor.
In , collections on display in the West Court included a wedge of a giant redwood tree, a mastodon skeleton, and a mammoth model. Our collection began with objects that had been on display at the exposition, from anthropological artifacts and geological specimens to an extensive botany collection. Museum researchers went on expeditions right from the start—beginning in —as a way to both expand the collection and document diverse life and environments around the world.
Expeditions continued on through two world wars, and our scientists are still traveling to all corners of the earth. Today, the collection contains nearly 40 million objects, only a fraction of which are on display to the public—and our collections staff continually works to make more of our specimens and artifacts accessible in new ways. World-renowned items on display include Egyptian mummies, the man-eating lions of Tsavo, and SUE, the largest and most complete Tyrannosaurus rex ever discovered—and there is so much more in the research collections.
The search began for a site to rebuild the museum. Specimens were loaded into crates and transported by rail and horse-drawn carriage. An empty Stanley Field Hall photographed in , the year before the museum reopened at its location south of Grant Park.
The hall is named for Stanley Field, nephew of founding museum benefactor Marshall Field. Stanley Field became president of the Field Museum in , a role he held for 56 years. He was instrumental in relocating the museum to its present location. Specimens like this case full of birds, including a Mute Swan and Scarlet Ibis, were loaded into crates and transported by rail and horse-drawn carriage. On May 2, , crowds lined up for miles to visit the Field Columbian Museum on opening day.
We continue to carry out cutting-edge research on the items in our collection as well as gather new specimens and objects through ongoing modern research far beyond our walls. Our research is rooted in the four major areas of our collections: anthropology, botany, geology, and zoology.
Landmark research efforts in China, Iraq, Madagascar, and the Pacific Northwest and American Southwest extended into the midth century. Today, Field Museum anthropologists continue to study and preserve the irreplaceable cultural heritage of humankind.
With active research in Greece, Hungary, Peru, Mexico, China, the Pacific, and the United States, their work follows five general themes: emergence, change in political hierarchy, human-environment interaction, economic anthropology, and urban culture.
In , the Field hired Charles Millspaugh as its first botany curator—he was not only a botanist but also a physician and expert in medicinal plants. In fact, a natural history museum had been in the works for a few years. In , Harvard professor Frederic Ward Putnam, in town to help oversee anthropological exhibits at the exposition, exhorted members of the Commercial Club of Chicago to establish a museum using the objects that would be left over from the fair.
An aspiring city like Chicago, Putnam argued, needed a major museum of natural history to compete culturally with East Coast cities, and Chicagoans agreed. When retail magnate Marshall Field offered a million-dollar check for the project, the Field Museum was born. While still in its Jackson Park location, the Field Museum along with the Art Institute underwent an important administrative change in Ownership of both institutions passed from the city to the newly constituted South Park Commission, one of three autonomous park districts established as a Progressive-era reform.
The result of this philanthropy was a massive white marble building in Grant Park , closer to other downtown cultural institutions. The new Field Museum opened to the public on May 2,
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