Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County
- Year
- 1913
- Style
- Spanish Colonial Revival
- City
- Los Angeles, CA
The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County opened in 1913 in Exposition Park, built in a grand Mediterranean Revival style as the anchor of grounds that attorney William Miller Bowen had spent the 1890s pushing to remake from a place of saloons and gambling into a civic cultural center. It is now the largest natural and historical museum in the Western United States, with nearly 35 million specimens and artifacts spanning 4.5 billion years.
the building
The collection. The museum's holdings run to nearly 35 million specimens and artifacts, including Kyawthuite, the rarest gemstone in the world, alongside vast onsite and offsite research collections that go far beyond what's on public view.
Exposition Park setting. The museum sits in Exposition Park next to the California Science Center and works in tandem with the Page Museum at the La Brea Tar Pits in Hancock Park, the two institutions sharing a mission built around natural and cultural history.
the style
Built in 1913 in the Mediterranean Revival style, the museum presents Exposition Park with a grand civic facade suited to its origins as the centerpiece of a park deliberately reimagined as a cultural rather than recreational ground.
More on Spanish Colonial Revivalsignificance
Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and paired institutionally with the Page Museum at the La Brea Tar Pits as the county's two natural history sites.
nearby
- Lucas Museum of Narrative Art
- Mudd Memorial Hall of Philosophy
- Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum
- Olin Hall of Engineering
- Gwynn Wilson Student Union
- Hoffman Hall