Snow Museum - Oakland

Snow Museum - copy of glass lantern slide
photo from Collection of OMCA ⁵

The Snow Museum of Natural History (1922 – 1967) was located in the Cutting Mansion (once the elegant home of Francis Cutting and his second wife, Sarah Abbie Kendall), on the shore of Lake Merritt, at Lakeside Drive and 20th Street.²(A 1938 city directory lists its address as 274 19th Street, where Snow Park is now.) The Snow Museum later became part of the Oakland Museum of California.

Henry Snow, a true Oaklander full of civic pride (“I am for Oakland first, last and all the time!”)wanted the city to build a new, fireproof museum to showcase his extensive collection of stuffed animals obtained from global big-game safari hunting, previously housed in Newark. He and local businessmen raised $1 million to back this offer, along with architectural plans drawn by Maury Diggs. However, Oakland’s city attorney deemed such donations illegal and shut down plans for the museum.

After Snow threatened to donate his entire collection to the City of San Francisco, the City of Oakland’s next best option was to acquire the 30-room Cutting mansion and display Snow’s collection there. This venue opened to the public in 1922. Schoolchildren from throughout Oakland marveled at the taxidermified hippos, rhinos, lions and tigers and bears as well as the thousands of bird eggs.

The museum closed and its contents, some of which are in the Oakland Museum of California, were auctioned off in 1967.

The live animals in Snow Museum Park later became the nucleus of the Oakland Zoo, which was managed for many years by Henry Snow's son Sidney A. Snow.

[the following is copy/paste, but at least it’s a start]

Henry and Sidney showed motion picture films of their African sojourns at the Hotel Oakland in 1922. The crowds cheered the sight of the word “Oakland” on the side of a safari vehicle.) In 1924, Henry and local businessmen raised $1 million, offering it to the city to build the museum. Fox Theater architect Maury Diggs even drew up the plans. But the city attorney deemed such action illegal, although today it wouldn’t be — Oakland might have had the Oakland Museum 50 years earlier.

Snow Museum exhibit, probably on display at auditorium
photo from Oakland History Room ⁴

Another scheme, which also did not come to fruition, involved a 40-foot-deep cave on the lakeshore edge of Lake Merritt to hold living lions, rhinos, hippos and giraffes. The harebrained aspect? No bars, no cages: just a water-filled moat too wide for them to jump and too deep to wade across. How could that go wrong? ¹

At one time, it was possible to rent some of the stuffed animals from the museum! “Oakland’s natural history center, the Snow Museum, rents out such unusual items as a crouching African lion, a polar bear, or even a gorgeous peacock.” ³

Sculptor Melvin Johansen began his career as a taxidermist for the Snow Museum.

Henry and Daisy’s daughter Nydine was the curator of the museum for many years.