St. Louis Museum facts for kids

The St. Louis Museum was a natural history museum in St. Louis, Missouri. It was also known as Koch's Museum. This museum showed off many interesting things from nature.

Where Was the Museum?

The museum was on the third floor of Wyman's Hall. This building was on Market Street in St. Louis, Missouri, right across from the Court House. Today, the Museum of Westward Expansion, which is under the Gateway Arch, is near where the old St. Louis Museum used to be.

Who Ran the Museum?

There are different stories about who started the museum.

One story says that Edward Wyman first opened the museum. He had help from J.P. Bates. Wyman had collected many natural history items over the years. He was good at getting them ready and putting them on display. Bates also loved natural history. He often traveled to places like Europe and South America to find birds, four-legged animals, and other cool specimens. The museum had almost 2500 items. Many of these were thought to be unique in the country. The collections included interesting things from the East Indies and South Sea Islands, paintings, statues, minerals, and shells.

Another story says that Dr. Albert C. Koch opened the museum in 1836. Koch was from Germany and moved to St. Louis. His father also liked natural history and kept specimens at home. Dr. Koch was a scientist, but he also liked to put on a good show at his museum. He sometimes put together skeletons in unusual ways and showed them off as amazing new discoveries, even if they weren't quite right. For example, he made some giant skeletons from smaller bones and presented them as ancient creatures. Even with his showmanship, Koch was important in science during the 1800s. His museum had many valuable natural history collections.

What Was in the Collections?

The St. Louis Museum had many cool things.

One collection included Native American costumes, weapons, pipes, and other items. General William Clark, who explored the Mississippi River with Meriweather Lewis, collected these. It is believed that Dr. Koch got these items after Clark passed away.

Another important collection had hundreds of fossils. One of these was from an American mastodon, a giant ancient elephant-like animal. These fossils came from many places, but most were found in Missouri. Between 1838 and 1840, Dr. Koch was digging near the Pomme de Terre River in Missouri. There, he found what he called the Missouri Leviathan, or Missourium. He said it was bigger than an elephant and had special tusks. However, scientists later figured out that this giant creature was actually a mastodon skeleton that Dr. Koch had put together with some extra bones, making it look bigger and more unique than it really was.

A drawing of Koch's "hydrarchos," a giant fossil creature.

A very famous item at the museum was a fossil called the Hydrarchos or Zeuglodon. A guide to the museum even called it "the greatest fossil in the world." This Zeuglodon was mostly made from basilosaurus fossils. These were found in 1848 in a field in Alabama. After they were dug out of the rock, Dr. Koch bought them for his museum.

Dr. Koch showed these fossils to a Yale chemist named Benjamin Silliman. Silliman had recently talked about the basilosaurus. He wrote a letter to Koch about his discovery. However, a poster promoting the exhibit used Silliman's letter in a way that made it seem like the hydrarchos was a "Leviathan of the Antediluvian World" (a giant creature from before a great flood). Professor Joseph Leidy also said the fossils were real, but it's not clear if he saw them before or after Dr. Koch put them together in his special way.

Eventually, Professor Jeffries Wyman showed that the display was a bit of a trick. Silliman then wrote another letter to Koch, asking not to be connected with the exhibit. Even so, the hydrarchos continued to be shown. Dr. Koch took it to Dresden, Germany. Sadly, it was destroyed there during Allied bombing in World War II. A smaller model of it was also destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire.

Dr. Koch spent a lot of time looking for fossils. Because he was away from the museum so much, fewer people came to visit. He was also a bit disappointed that people weren't as excited about his Missourium specimen as he was. Some people suggested he show it in Europe. Because of this, Dr. Koch sold the St. Louis Museum in January 1841 and left St. Louis. He traveled around the United States with his collections. Later, he went to Europe and showed the Missourium in London and Dublin. The British Museum then offered to buy parts of his fossil collection, including the Missourium, for 1300 pounds. Today, the Missourium is still on display in the British Museum, put together correctly.

After Dr. Koch left, the museum struggled and eventually closed.

What Happened to the Building?

After the museum closed, Wyman's Hall became a place for concerts and dances. The third floor, where the museum had been, was the main concert space in the city. The building burned down in June 1866. The fire caused about $140,000 worth of damage.