view of the interior of McGraw Hall when it housed the Museum of Vertebrates, 1889

Why the Hill Is Home to Amazing ‘Collections of Collections’

Our Big Red history expert recalls the McGraw Hall museum, which once housed an astounding array of objects

By Corey Ryan Earle ’07

“Prepare yourself for a terrible financial revelation,” founding president Andrew Dickson White wrote to his mother, “as well as an avalanche of the most splendid books ever seen in Syracuse.”

It was 1854, and White had just graduated from Yale and traveled to Europe. An avid collector, he was warning her of the impending arrival—and cost—of his book purchases.

Eleven years later, with the signing of Cornell’s charter, White had the opportunity to put his collecting habit to work for the new institution: the report laying out his plan for the University’s structure and needs used the words “collection” or “collections” 33 times in 48 pages.

While teaching history at the University of Michigan, White had recognized the importance of collections and primary sources.

An illustration of Corey Earle with the title Storytime with Corey

As he wrote in his autobiography: “I found that passages actually read from important originals during my lectures gave a reality and vividness to my instruction which were otherwise unattainable.”

In Ezra Cornell, White found a kindred spirit with deep pockets. Two months before the University’s founding, Ezra wrote his eldest son about acquiring a geology collection: “If we have a college or university we shall have to procure a cabinet of natural history and this as far as it goes is the best in the state and best in the world of the history of the NY rock.”

fossil mollusks that are part of the University's Newcomb collection were first brought to the then-Cornell University Museum in the 1800s
Jason Koski / Cornell University
The University acquired a collection of mollusk fossils in the 1800s.

In his memoir, White also documented his co-founder’s contributions to the growing teaching collections: “Then came the Jewett collection in geology, which he gave at a cost of $10,000; the Ward collection of casts, at a cost of $3,000; the Newcomb collection in conchology, at a cost of $16,000 … The scientific collections and apparatus of various sorts gave him constant pleasure.”

But with University buildings still under construction, space was a problem.

“The great quantities of furniture, apparatus, and books which I had sent from Europe,” White recalled, “had been deposited wherever storage could be found.”

exterior of McGraw Hall, west-facing facade, late 1800s
The Slope-facing side of McGraw Hall in the late 1800s.

The opening of McGraw Hall in 1872 alleviated some of the pressure. Its center section became the University museum, with an atrium extending from the second through fourth floors, and two upper galleries overlooking the main hall.

This grand space is where many of Cornell’s world-class collections began, across a wide range of disciplines.

The scientific collections and apparatus of various sorts gave him constant pleasure.

A.D. White, on co-founder Ezra Cornell

Visitors could view architectural photographs (now in Kroch Library); archaeological and anthropological collections (recently moved to the new Anthropology Collaboratory in Olin Library); the Wilder Brain Collection (now in the Psychology Department in Uris Hall); zoological collections (now housed in the Cornell Museum of Vertebrates at the Lab of Ornithology); geological and mineralogical collections (some in the Heasley Mineralogy Museum in Snee Hall); and more.

image of the Hellenistic sculpture casts in the Museum of Classical Archaeology at McGraw Hall as they appeared between 1891 and 1906
From 1891–1906, McGraw’s Museum of Classical Archaeology was home to dozens of plaster casts.

Until Uris’s completion, one floor of McGraw was the University Library—with the books then replaced by Cornell’s collection of plaster casts until Goldwin Smith Hall opened.

New acquisitions—often from faculty research expeditions or alumni donations—were regularly announced in the Daily Sun. They included an Egyptian mummy named Penpi, the preserved heart of Jumbo the circus elephant, shells, fossils, eight display cases of human brains, and a range of stuffed, pickled, preserved, and defleshed (non-human) specimens.

For many years, the museum’s centerpiece was a plaster cast skeleton of a prehistoric Megatherium ground sloth. Overhead was a cast of a plesiosaur that now hangs in Snee Hall.

a mounted cast of a plesiosaur, a flippered marine reptile from the early Jurassic period, appears mounted on an interior wall of Snee Hall in 2013; the cast was first purchased by Cornell in the 1870s and once hung in the Natural History Museum in McGraw Hall, and later a stairwell in Kimball Hall, before being moved to Snee in 1984
Joe Wilensky / Cornell University
The famed plesiosaur cast (right) has hung in Snee Hall since 1984.

When a manatee from South America arrived in 1885, headlines announced “Cornell Gets a Real Truly Mermaid.” (While the skeleton remains on campus, the whereabouts of its skull are unknown.)

Although the museum attracted a wide range of visitors, most of its items were for scientific purposes, not just display—allowing scholars to study and teach with the best illustrative examples available.

Although the museum attracted a wide range of visitors, most of its items were for scientific purposes, not just display.

The museum in McGraw had no full-time staff; faculty curated their own cabinets and exhibits, creating a hodgepodge of curiosities with varying levels of care and attention.

Over time, as campus expanded and departments moved out of McGraw, the museum shrank and collections were dispersed across campus, leaving the zoological specimens among the last on display.

By 1920, a “Guide to the Campus” noted the museum’s “inadequate lighting, narrow quarters, and antiquated cases … The collections have suffered from lack of care.”

Brains on display: A detail view of part of the collection in the late 1800s
A small sampling of brain specimens in the late 1800s.

Various renovations and remodels gradually reduced the museum space, until the atrium and its galleries vanished and evolved into faculty offices by the mid-20th century. (Now, with the building once again under construction, another chapter in McGraw’s history will begin.)

Although the museum is no more, its spirit lives on in Cornell’s vast teaching collections. From anatomical specimens to rare artifacts, these carefully curated objects continue to fulfill White’s vision of hands-on, experiential learning.

An expert on Big Red lore, Corey Ryan Earle ’07 teaches “The First American University,” a wildly popular spring semester course on Cornell history.

Top: The atrium of McGraw Hall in 1889, when it housed the Museum of Vertebrates. (All photos courtesy of Rare and Manuscript Collections, unless otherwise indicated.)

Published August 20, 2025

Comments

  1. Thomas Frank Nytch, Class of 1958
    9 Sep, 2025

    I used to love to visit the “museum” in James law Hall, of the veterinary College when it was located down-campus. It had all sorts of stuff, including the 8 foot tall man, or, atleast, his clothing, sort of a carnival-like exhibit. How it got to this place is unknown to me, but must be quite a story. And, of course, in typical Vet School fasion, rows of pickled organs, tumors, wierd things, etc. lined up in jars on its shelves.

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