Library and Scientific Collections
Among the artifacts from Old Main are the core of the collections of Halle Library, the EMU Herbarium, and the T.L. Hankinson Vertebrate Museum. Until the construction of the Science Building (today Sherzer Hall) in 1903 and the Library (today Ford Hall) in 1929, these collections resided in Old Main. Few items in these collections predate the fire of 1859, as Putnam relates:
On the night of Friday, October 28, 1859, this original building with its furniture and the library, then numbering about fifteen hundred volumes, was burned, nothing being saved but the chemical and philosophical apparatus, with a few cases of minerals and insects, and the bare brick walls.
Some of the oldest items in the collections are 400 specimens in the Herbarium collected by Preceptress and instructor of botany Ruth Hoppin between 1856 and 1880.
Cinnamon fern specimens gathered by Ruth Hoppin in Ypsilanti in 1870. EMU Herbarium.
The Hankinson Museum houses some of the osteological specimens visible in this photo from the 1893 exhibit, including a dolphin flipper and polar bear foot:
