Theodore Roosevelt Park

Theodore Roosevelt Park on the Upper West Side, home to the American Museum of Natural History, honors Theodore Roosevelt, the New York City native who served as Police Commissioner, Governor of New York State, Vice-President, and, after William McKinley’s assassination, the youngest President of the United States. Remembered for urging the nation to “speak softly and carry a big stick,” Roosevelt was also a scholar of natural history and a devoted conservationist who, as president, helped create the National Zoo, established 51 national bird sanctuaries, and preserved 18 natural wonders including the Grand Canyon. A magna cum laude Harvard graduate and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, he wrote three dozen books, and the Museum houses specimens he shot and collected during his family’s 1872 visit to Egypt. The land was mapped as a public park in 1807, acquired by the City in 1839, and later managed as an annex of Central Park; before the Museum was built there, it was considered for a zoo or botanical garden. Founded in 1869, the Museum was first housed in the Arsenal in Central Park before construction began on this site in 1874 under Calvert Vaux and Jacob Wrey Mould, opening in 1877. Later proposals for a large tabernacle on the site were rejected, and in 1929 the State secured land facing Central Park West for a Theodore Roosevelt Memorial. Public officials including President Franklin D. Roosevelt dedicated the indoor portions in 1936, and in 1940 the State added James Earle Fraser’s bronze statue of Roosevelt on a neoclassical granite pedestal designed by John Russell Pope. Known as Manhattan Square until 1958, the park has also been called Museum Park and Dinosaur Park. It is maintained with help from the Friends of Roosevelt Park, includes the Bull Moose Dog Run installed in 1990 and relocated during a 2000 renovation, and gained the Nobel Monument in 2003, chosen for the site because Roosevelt was the first President of the United States to win a Nobel Prize.

New York, New York · United States