[Note #1] The Birth of Brooks Hall

The VAS kindly invited me to share a weekly ‘blurb’ about Brooks Hall in the Firewalker. I am delighted to accept. I will offer these blurbs in serial format. Taken together over several weeks they will take shape as stories about this sometimes controversial, often misunderstood, distinctive building, home to the Anthropology Department for more than forty years. The first story begins, predictably, with how the building came to be at the University. Though you may have heard differently, it was no accident.

The Brooks Museum/Brooks Hall was a gift to the University made in 1876. The building and its exhibits were the gift of Lewis Brooks of Rochester, New York. Brooks was a retired textile manufacturer who was interested in natural science and philosophy. He was influenced by the Pundit Club, a small group that invited noted scholars to lecture in Rochester. The founder of the Club was Lewis Henry Morgan, ‘father’ of American anthropology, student of Native American kinship systems and president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (a post later held by Franz Boas and Margaret Mead).

From Professor Hantman