In 1919, Oakland resident Henry A. Snow returned from a major hunting expedition in Kenya.[1] He offered to donate his collected specimens to the city, under the condition that a museum building be constructed to house them. The City of Oakland provided a 30-room mansion near Lake Merritt to temporarily house the collection, and the Snow Museum opened in this building in 1922.[2] The museum's collections were expanded by the Snow family through the 1920s, over multiple hunts in Africa, North America, and the Arctic.[3] Several of these expeditions were filmed, and were edited into feature films such as 1922's Hunting Big Game in Africa with Gun and Camera.[1][4][5]
When the Snow Museum opened, the property was home to living animals, cared for by Snow's son Sidney. Due to noise and space concerns, these animals were moved to a larger property in Durant Park. This facility, the Oakland Zoo, opened in 1939.[6][7] Although Snow intended to have a permanent museum building completed, this did not come to fruition.[2] Snow died on July 28, 1927,[3] and his daughter Nydine took over operation of the museum.[6]
The Snow Museum closed in 1967. The majority of its collections from outside North America were auctioned off,[8] and its egg and nest collections were transferred to the Western Foundation of Vertebrate Zoology in 1976.[9] The remaining specimens were combined with the collections of two other small museums, the Oakland Public Museum and the Oakland Art Museum, to form the Oakland Museum (now the Oakland Museum of California) in 1969.[10][11] The museum building was demolished in 1970, and the site is now occupied by Snow Park.[2]
References
1 2 McKinley, Edward H. (1974). The lure of Africa: American interests in tropical Africa, 1919-1939. Bobbs-Merrill. ISBN0-672-51736-1.
