This album was evidently begun by Hawkins in 1872 and added to intermittently, the last datable entry being 1878. In its entirety, the album contains 56 items, including manuscripts, clippings, and images. This finding aid contains only the images found within the album. These images consist of 37 items: 16 photographic sepia prints, 10 prints, 3 b&w photographic prints, 3 wash drawings, 2 ink drawings, 2 watercolor drawings, and 1 pencil sketch. The images themselves measure from 6 x 4 cm. to 29 x 44 cm., and are mounted on album pages measuring 29 x 24 cm. Images include photographs of Hawkins, his New York studio, reconstructed skeletons, shanties in 1868 New York City, the Crystal Palace, and a rare photograph of Hawkins standing beneath his reconstructed Hadrosaurus foulkii in the Academy, when it was located at Broad and Sansom Streets; one of the invitations to the dinner in the Iguanadon; an antitreatise for Darwin's Descent of Man; and drawings, diagrams and plans by Hawkins for museum installations of various types (including the proposed Central Park museum). Some extraneous documents (item 13) have been tucked into the album by subsequent owners. The album shell is a commercial printed volume with a title page bearing the imprint of D. Appleton, 443 & 445 Broadway, N.Y. The paper is watermarked "Whatman 1865". The binding is padded paper-covered boards, dark brown with blind stamped panels. "Album" is printed in gilt on sides and spine; the end papers are nonpareil marbled paper. The binding measures 12 inches tall by 9.5 inches wide and 2.25 inches thick.

Arranged as items are found in the album. The contents were not originally arranged by chronology or subject matter, but fall into these categories (listed chronologically):

Crystal Palace, 1853-1854: items 6-7, 15, 25-6; American visit and work at ANSP, 1868: item 18; Central Park Project of 1869-1871 (Palaeozoic Museum and Central Park Zoo): items 14, 16, 17, 20, 22, 35, 41, 42, 53?; New York miscellanea, 1869-1873: items 32-34, 54; Smithsonian Project of 1871: items 20, 21, 23; Princeton project of 1875-1877, paintings for E.M. Museum: items 49-52; Darwin inspired: items 11, 27-28; Miscellaneous: items 55-56