University of Kansas Natural History Museum

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Dyche Hall, University of Kansas
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Museum of Natural History, Dyche Hall, the University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas
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Location14th St. and Oread Ave., University of Kansas campus, Lawrence, Kansas
Coordinates 38°57′31″N95°14′38″W / 38.95861°N 95.24389°W / 38.95861; -95.24389 Coordinates: 38°57′31″N95°14′38″W / 38.95861°N 95.24389°W / 38.95861; -95.24389
Built1901
ArchitectRoot & Siemens; Bennett, Henry
Architectural styleRomanesque
NRHP reference No. 74000829 [1]
Added to NRHPJuly 14, 1974
A linear barcode that uniquely identifies a specimen in the museum's entomology collection. Linear barcode KUNHM-ENT SEMC0993403.png
A linear barcode that uniquely identifies a specimen in the museum's entomology collection.

The University of Kansas Natural History Museum is part of the University of Kansas Biodiversity Institute, a KU designated research center dedicated to the study of the life of the planet. [2]

Contents

The museum's galleries are in Dyche Hall on the university's main campus in Lawrence, Kansas. The galleries are open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and noon to 4 p.m. on Sundays. Dyche Hall has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places since July 14, 1974; it was listed for its connection with Lewis Lindsay Dyche and for its distinctive Romanesque style of architecture. [3] [4] The exterior is constructed of local Oread Limestone, [5] while the window facings, columns, arches, and grotesques [6] are carved from Cottonwood Limestone. Dyche Hall is also the site of one of only three Victory Eagle statues in Kansas, once used as markers on the Victory Highway.

Among its more than 350 separate exhibits, the museum is famous for its Panorama of North American Wildlife, part of which represented Kansas in the 1893 World's Colombian Exposition in Chicago, and was the impetus for the funding and construction of Dyche Hall and its Natural History Museum between 1901 and 1903. Modeled after a church in France, Dyche Hall was designed to house the Panorama in the "apse" of the entrance gallery. The museum is also renowned for Comanche, the only survivor on the U.S. Cavalry side of the Battle of the Little Bighorn; for its extensive exhibits of plesiosaurs, mosasaurs, pterosaurs, and other fossils from the Kansas Chalk; and most recently for its newest displays of mammalian skulls, the parasites of sharks and rays, and the pre-Columbian archaeology of Costa Rica.

The Biodiversity Institute, with more than 10 million specimens of plants, animals, fossils, and archaeological artifacts, is one of the world's leaders in collection-based studies of systematics, evolution, phylogenetics, paleobiology, past cultures, biodiversity modeling, and in providing digital access to collection-based biodiversity data biodiversity informatics, including deploying these data for forecasting environmental phenomena. The Institute's collections, faculty-curators, staff and students are housed in six buildings across the KU campus, with the most recent expansion occurring in 2006–2007, when the Division of Entomology, along with parts of the ornithological and mammal collection, were moved to a new facility on the university's West Campus.

See also

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Mount Oread

Mount Oread is a hill in Lawrence, Kansas upon which the University of Kansas, and parts of the city of Lawrence, Kansas is located. It sits on the water divide between the Kansas River and the Wakarusa River rivers. It was named after the long defunct Oread Institute in Worcester, Massachusetts, where many of the settlers of Lawrence moved from prior to the American Civil War. The hill was originally called Hogback Ridge by many Lawrence residents until the Oread name was adopted in 1864, two years after the university was founded.

Redpath Museum Museum of natural history in Quebec, Canada

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Francis H. Snow

Francis Huntington Snow was an American professor and chancellor of the University of Kansas (KU), and he became prominent through the discovery of a fungus fatal to chinch bugs and its propagation and distribution. Born in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, he was the son of Benjamin and Mary B. (Boutelle) Snow, and one of his paternal ancestors, Richard Warren, was a member of the Mayflower company. He was married on June 8, 1868, to Jane Appleton Aiken.

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Lewis Lindsay Dyche

Lewis Lindsay Dyche was a notable naturalist and also the creator of the Panorama of North American Plants and Animals, which was featured in the Kansas Pavilion at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition. His taxidermy work is housed at The University of Kansas' Natural History Museum in Lawrence, KS. Also at KU is the U.S. Army's lone survivor on the field of the Battle of Little Big Horn, a Horse, Comanche, which the Army asked Dyche to stuff for their display.

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History of the University of Kansas

The history of the University of Kansas can be traced back to 1855, when efforts were begun to establish a "University of the Territory of Kansas." Nine years later in 1864, together with the help of Amos Adams Lawrence, former Kansas Governor Charles L. Robinson, and several other prominent figures, the Kansas Legislature chartered the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas. The university was initially funded by a $15,000 endowment on a 40-acre (160,000 m2) allotment of land from Charles Robinson and his wife Sara. The university commenced preparatory-level classes in 1866 and college-level classes in 1869.

Spooner Hall United States historic place

Spooner Hall was built in 1893-94 as the University of Kansas' first library building. The Richardsonian Romanesque structure was designed by architect Henry Van Brunt and built with funds bequeathed by William B. Spooner, a Massachusetts leather merchant who had a family connection to the university. As originally built, the building housed a reading room on the ground floor and meeting space on the upper level, with book stacks in a five-story section.

Oread Limestone

The Oread Limestone is a geologic unit of formation rank within the Shawnee Group throughout much of its extent. It is exposed in Kansas, Nebraska, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Iowa. The type locality is Mount Oread within Lawrence, Kansas. It preserves fossils of the Carboniferous period. Although it has significant shale members, its limestone members are resistant and form escarpments and ridges. Limestone from the unit is a historic building material in Kansas, particularly in the early buildings of the University of Kansas; standing examples include Spooner Hall and Dyche Hall.

Cottonwood Limestone

Cottonwood Limestone, or simply the Cottonwood, is a stratigraphic unit and a historic stone resource in east-central Kansas, northeast-central Oklahoma, and southeastern Nebraska in the Midwestern United States. It is the lowest member of the Beattie Limestone formation and commonly outcrops within the deep valleys and on top of the scenic residual ridges of the Flint Hills.

References

  1. "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places . National Park Service. March 13, 2009.
  2. Archaeological collection management
  3. "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places . National Park Service. April 15, 2008.
  4. KANSAS – Douglas County, nationalregisterofhistoricplaces.com. Accessed 2008-12-24.
  5. National Register of Historic Places Registration Form: University of Kansas Historic District (PDF), National Park Service, Local craftsmen quarried Oread limestone from the north slope of the ridge for the first generation of buildings.
  6. "Dyche Hall Grotesques". University of Kansas. Retrieved 2015-01-31.

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