The original plans for New York City's Central Park included a Paleozoic Museum at 63rd Street and Central Park West, which would have displayed life-size concrete models of dinosaurs placed in carefully designed dioramas. Those plans were dashed in 1871 when vandals broke into the workshop of the museum's designer, Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins, and smashed the models with sledgehammers, burying the rubble in the southwestern corner of the park.
The traditional take in paleontology circles is that the man behind the destruction was William "Boss" Tweed, who pretty much ruled the city's Democratic Party political machine at the time with his cronies at Tammany Hall. But a recent paper published in the Proceedings of the Geologists' Association identifies a different culprit: a lawyer and businessman named Henry Hilton, a member of the Tammany Hall contingent who championed plans for what would become the American Museum of Natural History.
Co-authors Victoria Coules and Michael Benton of the University of Bristol in England also found no evidence of a religious motivation for the destruction, i.e., opposition to the then-nascent field of paleontology and its associated implications for evolutionary theory, which were deemed "blasphemous" by some religious leaders. Rather, it seems to have been one of many "crazy actions" by Hilton. "We find that Hilton exhibited an eccentric and destructive approach to cultural artifacts, and a remarkable ability to destroy everything he touched, including the huge fortune of the department store tycoon Alexander Stewart," Coules and Benton wrote. "Hilton was not only bad but also mad."
Hawkins was an English sculptor and natural history artist who caused a sensation at the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London with his life-size dinosaur models. Cast in concrete and designed in conjunction with paleontologist Sir Richard Owen, the models were subsequently relocated to what is now Crystal Palace Park. Owen even hosted a memorable dinner party on December 31, 1853, inside the actual mold Hawkins had used to cast the Iguanodon sculptures.
News of the Crystal Palace dinosaurs spread to America and the Board of Commissioners in charge of developing plans for Central Park, led by Andrew Haswell Green. Hawkins was already in the US on a lecture tour, as well as designing and casting a nearly complete Hadrosaurus skeleton for the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia—the world's first mounted dinosaur skeleton. So he was a natural choice to create life-size dinosaur sculptures for the planned Paleozoic Museum in Central Park. Green wrote to Hawkins in May 1868, offering him the commission, and Hawkins accepted. The Board also tapped architects Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux to design the park's layout and features.
The dinosaur models for the Paleozoic Museum would be based on those specimens specifically found in North America, although this was just before the famous American "bone rush" of the 1870s to 1890s yielded large numbers of fossilized dinosaur skeletons and bones. Hawkins was provided a workspace in a large brick building known as the Arsenal (or the Armory) on 64th Street, beginning with small clay models based on the available fossil evidence before making the life-size molds. Meanwhile, Olmsted and Vaux lodged their architectural plans for the museum building and dug out the foundations.
Alas, the political winds were shifting in New York City by 1870. Boss Tweed disbanded the board led by Green and appointed a new board with all his own people, headed by Peter Sweeny, with Hilton serving as treasurer. By this time, plans were underway for the more ambitious American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) to be located on or adjacent to Central Park. Hawkins had to move out of the Arsenal into a nearby shed to continue his work to make room for the specimens and collections being acquired for the AMNH.
The AMNH wasn't intended to rival the planned Paleozoic Museum; Green's board had supported both projects. But Tweed's newly appointed board felt differently and elected to stop the project in May 1870. The official reason was economic. Their 1871 annual report specifically cited the high cost of completing the Paleozoic Museum (some $300,000, or about $7.5 million today), all coming from public funds, unlike the AMNH, which was supported by philanthropic fundraising. This was deemed "too great a sum to expend on a building devoted wholly to paleontology—a science, which however interesting, is yet so imperfect as not to justify so great a public expense for illustrating it." There were also plans for a zoo in Central Park, and the board favored supporting living animals over extinct ones.
The Paleozoic Museum was officially canceled at the board's December 6, 1870, meeting, to the great disappointment of Hawkins. In March of the following year, he gave a report on his work and the project's cancellation to the Lyceum of Natural History, which was covered by The New York Times. Hawkins expressed hope that the cancellation would prove temporary. Archaeologist Ephraim G. Squier was less optimistic and sarcastically noted that "the only way... in which the museum could be successful was to elect Tweed as president, Sweeny as treasurer, and the rest of them as directors."
Two months later, vandals smashed Hawkins' models and destroyed any plans and drawings they could find. Paleontology lore holds that Tweed ordered the destruction in retaliation for Hawkins' (perceived) public criticism of Tweed, bolstered by religious objections to the display of so-called "pre-Adamite" animals. But was Boss Tweed the true culprit? Was a news article buried on page 5 about a meeting of a minor scientific society truly something Tweed would have noticed? And if he did, and was offended by the implied criticism, why would he wait two months before exacting his revenge on Hawkins?
To find out the truth, Coules and Benton undertook a thorough re-examination of all the relevant historical records, annual reports, minutes, and media coverage. They also reviewed the source material for the accepted story in paleontology circles, beginning with an account in a 1940 book (Schuchert ad LeVene) with no references or citations. That account contained the two primary elements: that Boss Tweed was responsible and that there may have been a Creationist motivation behind the vandalism. Additional accounts in 1959 and 1974 bolstered those details, although only the 1959 account cited relevant letters and documents.
These three accounts seem to have influenced all subsequent accounts of the vandalism in paleontological history. But this was not supported by the authors' analysis of contemporary records. "As is often the case, sensational stories may acquire a life of their own, based on some knowledge of the true facts, but are then elaborated and improved upon to some extent as they are retold," the authors wrote.
As for the real culprit behind the vandalism, Coules and Benton found the smoking gun in the minutes of a May 2, 1871, meeting of the board:
Resolved, That the shed building on Central Park, near Sixty-second street and Eighth avenue, be removed to the north-easterly end of the Park, and that the old barn, shed, and structures at that place be removed under the direction of the Treasurer, retaining only such as can be appropriated and temporarily used to advantage as work-shops.
The "shed" was Hawkins' workshop, and the order to remove it came from Hilton as treasurer. Hawkins' workshop was destroyed the very next day. But what was Hilton's motivation for destroying another man's work? Coules and Benton dismiss the notion that it was due to any religious objection, pointing out that the term "pre-Adamite" was frequently used among scientists at the time and was not associated with any conflict with religion. They note that Hilton was a strong supporter of the AMNH—perhaps to ingratiate himself with his wealthy patron, Alexander Stewart—and apparently viewed the Paleozoic Museum as competition.
Furthermore, it seems Hilton considered himself to be something of an expert on museum matters and had a history of interference, with a particular obsession for white paint. For instance, when he came across a bronze statue in Central Park by sculptor Charles J. Innes, Hilton insisted it be repainted white. (The statue was eventually restored, but not without damage to the surface.) He did the same for a whale skeleton acquired by the AMNH. Coules and Benton also note that when Stewart named Hilton co-executor of his estate, along with his widow Cornelia, Hilton convinced Cornelia to sign the business interests over to him. Hilton proceeded to squander the entire fortune, making himself a public laughingstock.
There may also have been some personal animosity between Hilton and Hawkins, especially since Hawkins could be difficult in his own right. He resented outside interference in his artistic choices, and Hilton loved interfering. Coules and Benton uncovered an 1872 report that indicates Hawkins certainly cast blame for the destruction of his workshop on Hilton, claiming he had done so "out of ignorance, just as he had a coat of white paint put on the skeleton of a whale... and just as he had a bronze statue painted white."
Hawkins returned to London in 1874 just in time to face what he termed a "climax of domestic troubles." Hawkins, it turns out, was a bigamist. He married his first wife, Mary, in 1826, who bore him 10 children, but then fell in love with his second wife, an artist named Louise. He married Louise in 1836, a union that also resulted in children. "Somehow he managed to run two families for 30 years by claiming to have to take long trips overseas engaged in art projects," the authors wrote. "But both women began to be aware of his duplicity in the 1860s, so his departure to the US might have been tactical."
Things did not improve on the domestic front when Hawkins returned to England; he was estranged from Mary and living with their son, and Louise had found out about the bigamy. After Mary died, Hawkins legalized his marriage to Louise, but it seems to have been done only to ensure their children were deemed legitimate; they never reconciled. He died in January 1894. Some fragments of his Hadrosaur sculpture are all that survive of his American dinosaur models. At least most of the Crystal Park dinosaurs survived.
DOI: Proceedings of the Geologists' Association, 2023. 10.1016/j.pgeola.2023.04.004 (About DOIs).
