Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins Album
Scope and Contents
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
Dates
- circa 1853-1875
Creator
Biographical / Historical
Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins, author, sculptor and naturalist, was born in London on February 8, 1807. He was educated at the college of St. Aloysius and studied art under the sculptor William Behnes. After 1827 he devoted himself to the study of natural history, and after 1852 the study of geology. From 1842-1847 he was employed in making models of living animals at Knowsley Park for the Earl of Derby.
In 1851 he served as assistant superintendent of the London World's Fair. The following year he was appointed by the Crystal Palace Company to restore the external forms of the extinct animals to their natural gigantic size, and then, under the direction of Sir Richard Owen, he devoted three and a half years to the construction of thirty-three life size models of prehistoric animals for the Crystal Palace park. It was during this time, in December 1853, that he gave a dinner to twenty literary and scientific men, whom he seated within his model of the Iguanadon.
In 1868 he came to New York where he lectured on science, and began work on models of prehistoric animals for Central Park, as authorized by its Commissioners. He constructed a skeleton of the Hadrosaurus foulkii, America's first known dinosaur, using fossil bones and plaster reconstructions, which he gave to the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia in return for its generosity in providing him with specimens to work from. The Academy's mount was an immediate sensation. It was the first mounted dinosaur in the world, and Hawkins soon received orders for copies from Princeton, Chicago and the Smithsonian (Hawkins's work at Princeton University also included oil paintings of prehistoric creatures). Unfortunately, in 1871 William "Boss" Tweed ordered the Central Park museum's foundations plowed under, claiming that the price tag for the museum would be too high. When Hawkins persisted, Tweed sent vandals into the museum to destroy Hawkins's models, and later his molds.
Hawkins returned to England at this time, and later came back to the United States to lecture on popular science. He died in 1894 in obscurity, as no known obituary of him has been found. He was a member of the Linnean Society (1843), the Royal Geographic Society (1854), and the Academy of Natural Sciences (1868).
Extent
0.5 linear feet (2 boxes)
Language of Materials
English
Overview
Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins, author, sculptor and naturalist, began this album in 1872, and continued to add to it intermittently, the last datable entry being of 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. 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).
Custodial History
The album had been in Harriett B. West's family library but nothing is known of its provenance. Mrs. Barbara Houck, a freind of Miss West's, acted as intermediary, bringing the album to the Academy in October 1985, but the gift was not finalized until December.
Immediate Source of Acquisition
Gift of Harriet B. West of Richmond, Virginia, 1985
Physical Description
At some point the album was dissasembled and the individual photographs and documents numbered and placed in mylar sleeves. The album itself was retained along with notations about the original placement of the photographs and documents within the album.
Creator
- Status
- Completed
- Author
- Mary Hammer
- Date
- 2003
- Language of description
- English
- Script of description
- Latin
- Sponsor
- Cataloging and digitizing made possible by The Getty Grant Program.
Repository Details
Part of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University Repository
1900 Benjamin Franklin Parkway
Philadelphia PA 19103 USA
215-299-1075
215-299-1144 (Fax)
archives@ansp.org